If news companies only write about what their audience wants to hear, is news even beneficial? Now more than ever, major news companies heavily tie themselves to one political side. This is clear in examples like CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, and Newsmax. People are naturally biased; no matter how hard organizations try to be unbiased, it’s not possible. However, the problem is not the low-biased news sites; instead, it’s the big News companies that are purposely making the opposite political side look bad with misleading headlines and blurring the line between facts and opinion.

Modern headlines are purposely polarizing in order to capture readers’ attention. This is exceptionally detrimental because it’s estimated that only 20% of people actually read through headlines, therefore spreading bias even more. A study done by the University of Rochester using 1.8 million headlines found that headline bias has increased from 2014 to 2022.

Examples of news stories like this are everywhere, for example, on July 30, both the New York Times and the White House official website posted articles covering the US economy. The White House titled the Article “Economic Growth Shatters Expectations as President Trump Fuels America’s Golden Age.” The New York Times on the same day posted an article under the headline “U.S. Economy Slowed in First Half of 2025 as Tariffs Scrambled Data.”

Both of these articles have facts about the US economy. The contrast between the two articles is the problem; both are picking and choosing specific stats to persuade their audience politically. Instead of actually learning about the economy, the reader is only learning one viewpoint of the article. 

The majority of readers aren’t going to cross-reference news sources, causing both sides to be left without important information. Both of these articles are clearly trying to sway people’s opinions on President Trump. This shouldn’t be the purpose of the news. The effects of increasingly biased news organizations are already showing. 

A Gallup poll discovered that seven in 10 adults say that they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%). This statistic is frightening; the more we, as Americans, can’t believe our own media, the less aware we are of the world around us.

Modern news is pulling America apart politically. 

If you could take one message from this article, I would urge you to be aware of media bias and to not let yourself become too politically polarized.