Twitter: A great tool but a suspect news source
Oct. 13, 2018
Being a college student, I naturally spend a large chunk of time checking Twitter – it’s one of my favorite apps. Without it, it’s unlikely I’d be employment with Michigan State Football in the way I have. I owe to it my growing professional network associated with football and creative media.
However, it’s far from being a reliable source for news, especially political news.
The bias the platform shows when covering topics via “Moments” or what tweets are shown on trends are heavily slanted to favor the left side of the political spectrum. The outlets they choose and the opinion leaders they feature paint a picture celebrating liberal values and belittling conservative ones.
Make no mistake. It’s all by design. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is a documented donor for Democrat candidates and often shares liberal-leaning views on his account. Even Twitter employees have admitted to the bias.
There’s an easy way to see this bias. All it takes is a scandal to break.
Take one breaking on the right with the Chris Collins insider trading case. Within the first few words of the Moment, he’s identified with his political affiliation, whether as “Republican representative” or “(R-N.Y.)”. This was seen again with Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis over out-of-context comments what were framed as racist. This implies that Republicans must be the scandalous and malicious group. The moments are complemented with disparaging opinions against Republicans to help this narrative.
With a scandal breaking on the left, more times than not, you’d have to dig to find out if the person in question is a Democrat – as seen with Al Franken and Bob Menendez. This hides the full context, that Democrats are also capable of malicious activity. Additionally, the accompanying tweets are just reporting as-is, basic quotes and no spins against Democrats, but with calls from opinion leaders to “wait for all the facts” – compared to jumping the gun when it’s Republicans.
This type of word play is dangerous, especially when Twitter claims to be a neutral forum and grows as a primary source for news.
This is beyond agenda setting. It’s really telling people what to think. The message is liberal ideas are the norm and conservative ideas are the deviation.
Couple this with the rapid spread of these views when Twitter highlights them, it portrays a one-sided picture. People who are exposed to only a single perspective are misled, and they accept it as fact, regardless of how flawed it may be.
The fix? It’s simple.
Stop playing politics when you claim to be a neutral platform.
Not a hard concept, but it must start at the top – Dorsey – and how the company is run. If he wants to run something that resembles a journalistic operation, conflicts of interest need to be left at the door. Stories must be handled the same way without regard to ideological differences – if one opinion is truly superior, why try to censor opposing viewpoints?
Objectivity is imperative for news sources, and Twitter lacks it.
