Who Can We Trust?

A Reflection on Current News

By Zachary Reboletti

Student at University of Kentucky

September 5, 2020

    Every day, we are flooded with information whether it is from out laptops, cellphones, or televisions. Especially now more than ever, the current political climate is enhanced by a increasingly polarized media. It can be very tough to find a reliable, unbiased, and trustworthy news source with talks of "fake news" and politically-charged narratives filling up much of the information we obtain. 

    This can be a huge problem during a pandemic when reliable information is what we need the most. As citizens, it is our responsibility to stay informed on what is going on around us and act accordingly in order to be the best citizen we can. It seems that information can be easily skewed and distorted to make an audience believe that certain demographics are at fault for outbreaks and that one party is the reason for this pandemic, when in reality there are layers. This whole idea of the pandemic being politicized it truly dangerous because of this exact reason: people need unbiased and reliable information during a time of need. 

    I tend to be skeptical of any news that I watch, and this why I carefully examine all the evidence presented to me when watching any news channel. I often ask myself, "what motives does this news station have" or "what bias may they be trying to convey". Normally, I stay away from CNN because historically I have found them to be very left-leaning in their ideology which leads them to often times push a narrative. This same mentality goes for Fox News as well, even though I grew up watching this with my family being in a Republican household. Even though I agree with their ideology, I can understand that they also are pushing a narrative. In times like these, I find it inappropriate to use this pandemic as an outlet to push any narrative that is not health related. Recently, I got a subscription to New York Times for my GEO261 class, and I have been reading some of the articles, yet I can also see some left-leaning bias in their news as well. It definitely is more moderate, though, so  have been using them for a lot of information. Plus I should be using what I pay for of course. 

    A couple months ago when I lived in Illinois, though, I watched the CBS Chicago to gather information from Governor Pritzker. For months, he had daily COVID-19 updates where he would speak and answer questions live to inform the public. He brought with him health officials that would talk about the current numbers and speak on their personal advisories. I didn't necessarily agree with everything Pritzker had to say, but I tuned in for the daily COVID-19 cases and wanted to understand what new policies would be in place. Above, I attached a snippet from a recent hearing on his expansion of mask rules for restaurants and bars. Sometimes I feel like Illinois was a lot more laid back in their coronavirus policies, and I saw this first hand when working in the restaurant industry. Here in Kentucky, I see everyone wearing a mask, even outside, and this was completely different from Elmhurst where almost no one wore masks outside. Maybe this could be a reason why Illinois seems to have a higher number of cases overall, but as I said before, there are so many different factors that go into this that make it hard to put blame on one particular aspect of policy.