People often rely on media houses and news channels for global information and updates, with the hope of it being neutral in many ways. However, media coverage these days is becoming biased and focusing on promoting news that is targeted to a specific audience. This essay portrays various reasons as to why this happens and what can be done to fix these issues.
A major reason why media coverage is becoming biased is due to overall viewership. Viewers prefer a certain type of content, which media channels promote through their products. In doing so, media houses tend to amend facts and opinions to suit their target audience. Often, many viewers of these specific media channels with hidden coverage tend to believe this bias and formulate strong opinions based on limited facts. A solution to this problem would be to establish a statutory board that creates a framework of operation, stating rules and policies for relaying information. For example, in Norway, all news channels are managed by the Censor Board of Norway, which sets a benchmark and working policy within which all media houses function.
In addition to viewership, media houses are also controlled by many political parties, who tend to promote their agenda and political ideas through media channels. Major media houses are financially backed by political parties, leading to information being either omitted or exaggerated depending on the alignment of the news with their ideologies. This is one of the major reasons why media coverage tends to become biased. For instance, in India, news channels like Republic Inc and India Today focus mostly on new political developments of the ruling party instead of covering issues such as illiteracy and poverty. To overcome this issue, there must be a regulation that does not allow media channels to be owned entirely by political parties and instead promotes part ownership through public investment, giving people the right to share their opinions about media coverage.
In conclusion, media coverage and information are largely becoming biased for viewers. To overcome this challenge, there should be more regulations and policies to manage how information is portrayed to viewers.