No It's Not Your Opinion, By Jef Rouner

The major barrier to public thinking in the States is education. In America, citizens to do not take the time and effort to fully comprehend the system. In turn, the people fail to complete the necessary means to uphold their responsibility to the government as private citizens. Additionally, the uneducated is added to the mass media reporting. The education of public speaking is then presented by news outlets or mainly the internet. Citizens believe they become educated my today's forms of communication. However, this produces a problem of biased opinions, whether it be the source of the information or the individual puts its personal belief first. While other barriers can be discussed, these are the major factors of restrictive political thinking.

In the study, each source was ranked based on the political leanings of its audience. As a result, it ranked sources such as Buzzfeed more liberal than average while it ranked sources such as the Rush Limbaugh Show more conservative than average. However, none of the sources earned a perfectly neutral ranking (Wormald). The correlation between news sources and their audience’s political leanings becomes interesting when compared to the type of content each news source produces. Rush Limbaugh, for example, is infamous for his conservative rhetoric, whereas Buzzfeed is known for its lighthearted quizzes and comical representation of liberal politics. This reveals something about our perception of truth: biased sources allow individuals to ‘select’ the truth. When conflicting information is pushed to the side, it becomes nonexistent. Subsequently, the sum of partial truths interpreted by an individual becomes a whole truth in their mind, especially when partial truths are reinforced by mainstream media sources such as Buzzfeed or the Rush Limbaugh Show. This is harmful because, as Lewis implied, the entire truth is lost in this process and mutual understanding becomes harder to

The theme of suffering will be talked about throughout this essay. Even though it isn’t the most pleasant topic to talk about, it is part of our lives. The dictionary defines suffering as “The state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.” This essay will examine suffering and how it shows up in different printed sources, as well as in my personal life.

In the book “They say. I say”, Michael Pollan and Mary Maxfield have different formulas for eating. Are the ideas that society has today differ or not? Michael Pollan believes that one should “Eat food. Not much. Mostly plants” (426). What he explains in his idea is that one should eat real food and not the processed. He also believes that the food industry is the one to blame for confusing people in what they are eating because all of the food is being processed and it is not real. By this he explains how America should “quit obsessing over this French paradox and start obsessing over the French fry” (442). In contrast, Mary Maxfield argues that one should “Trust yourself. Trust your body. Meet your needs.” Maxfield built up the BMI, a tool to measure one’s body fat. Many people look into what is right and wrong to eat. Mary Maxfield explains that yes, we can eat healthy, but we can also eat whatever we’d like and still survive. Because many people have different formulas and rules to follow when it comes to eating, I believe that one has to set a goal for themselves. Be happy with achieving the goals one sets and portion out the food.

Freedom. Doesn’t that word make you just want to leap out of your seat and change the world? For us it does. We have been trapped under Great Britain's rule since the dawn of the colonies existence. It’s time we take charge and fight, rather than stand back and let them walk all over us. We deserve to be able to use our own voices to say whatever we want. We have the right to do what we want when we want, after all, we are all created equal by God. But, we are no match for the great nation. They have a much stronger army, a well developed government, and loads of guns and all sorts of weaponry. For now, we must live by and honor their rules. But one day, this won’t be the case anymore. We, the colonists, shall remain loyal to Britain because we believe that a great deal of the claims made by some of the Patriots are false. If we are to remain loyal, we expect Britain to continue protecting us, keep the taxes off, and allow us to use the structure of trade and settlement they set up for us.

The perpetuation of misinformation can be very difficult to correct and may have lasting effects even after it is discredited. For instance, if an audience is reliant on the information provided by the media to make an informative decision about a topic involving their morals, the validity of the author’s claims will determine the mass majority of their decisions they make in the future. As a result, false information may continue to influence beliefs and attitudes even after being debunked if it is not replaced by an alternate causal explanation.

To assume that something is correct because of popular opinion allows those with influence to manipulate our way of thinking if we do not do our own research. Over the past month, a huge argument between the President and the media has been about how many people were at the inauguration speech of President Obama in comparison to how many were at President Trump’s. It is as if both sides are trying to say who is right by saying who had more people. To think that one President is better because one had more support at the inauguration speech is ridiculous yet the argument received plenty of air time on both sides of the media and garnished a lot of attention from the White House. Apparently, this is a very important argument to be won though by the amount of attention it has received.

Media is everywhere nowadays and is an outlet for everyone and anyone in the world to share their opinions. Opinions are nowhere near being the facts, opinions could very easily be twisted facts. That's why people have to be careful with what they see and hear on media. Although you wouldn't think that a newspaper article would be opinion based, it really is. In any public statement there is a bias and a bias is stemmed from one's opinions. At first glance you may think that the media source is solely facts but when you look back on it and dig deeper you get the sense of bias that an author has with their diction and their use of rhetorical devices. Therefore, reading one article on a topic won’t do anything to help you, you have to read multiple

On the other hand, Aviva Chomsky clearly demonstrate that people look for a better future and head towards the opportunities, immigrants in U.S. are not fighting for a student loan or access to a free clinic, they are fighting for the opportunities that they are denied in their native country. The myth that “Immigrants only come here because they want to enjoy our higher standard of living” (Chomsky 121). It is a myth because immigrant must of the time they come here to work and build a better future for their families without enjoying the benefits that a U.S. citizen has. According to Chomsky states that “Poverty, lack of opportunity, and danger push people to leave; opportunity, availability of jobs, education, and safety pull people elsewhere” (Chomsky 122). The lack of jobs on their natives’ countries made them to look for a better future, also in most countries the violence is incredible high compared to the U.S. that the jobs are everywhere and their security system made the immigrants feel safe even though there trap in their cruel system. In addition, the medical system is better for example a Filipina Nurse states that “The thing I love about America hospitals is that we have enough supplies and equipment. In the Philippines we boiled our own rectal tubes, you use the catheters over and over. But, here you just use it once and dump it out” (Chomsky 125). Compared, to the Philippines their resources are limited most of the time, while the U.S. has all the basic

Ignorance due to inability to spot biased is a monumental issue in the U.S. In 1984, people did not have an option on who or what to believe. They were all required to watch a Two Minute Hate so they would dislike what the Party wanted them to dislike. The people could only see what the Party wanted them to see as no other channels they existed. In fact, the telescreens could not be shut off at all. Constant exposure to the Party’s beliefs caused people to be biased towards the government’s views. In this country, people hear, watch, and absorb news every day, but they do not always see or hear the presented bias. For example, Fox News is conservative-leaning and MSNBC is more liberal (Garrett 2&3). People who only watch one news channel without acknowledging or spotting the bias tend to accept what they hear as fact without a second thought. Depending on where information is collected or heard, the person forms opinions based on bias rather than facts without realizing the error in their wapithes and become easy to manipulation occurs.

Robert J. Samuelson’s essay, “Picking Sides for the News,” details the problem of citizens only hearing the news that they want to hear through statistics. Samuelson begins his essay by giving the reader the opinion of Americans in regards to news being reported. He goes on to say that Americans are increasingly choosing to listen to news based on “partisanship,” meaning conservatives listen to Republican news and liberals listen to Democratic news. Samuelson highlights the fact that most Americans are starting to not believe what they hear in the news, partisan growth resulting because of the distrust. Samuelson concludes his essay by describing why the reader should care. He believes the reader should care because the media’s bias’ are shaping

The exaggerating is a major problem for those trying to develop an opinion because they draw their views based on public opinion.

Consumers now have access to more information than in any other point in history, and are being subjected to partisan news on a larger scale than ever before. Partisan news outlets, such as Fox News and MSNBC tailor their broadcasts to appeal to the confirmation bias of their target audiences. Each network not only chooses which stories to run based on the interest of their target demographic, but also frames the facts in a way that leads consumers to believe that their own beliefs, however factual, are correct, which aligns with a scientific principle known as confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to seek out information that aligns with their beliefs,

In the 2016 election, Trump claimed the media was biased towards his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When the media coverage of both candidates were observed, it is clear that they wanted Clinton wanted to win. Many people in the US follow the news and get all of their information there. However, most people do not trust mainstream media because they think the media is biased and trying to influence their views on many important topics in today’s society. In fact, 66% of the people in a survey believed that the media was twisting information related to global warming (Evans). If the news was more objective, more people would listen to the news because they would feel as if they got the correct information. Things such as elections would be more

In his article ‘the awful truth: education won't stop the west getting poorer’ for the Guardian newspaper, Peter Wilby seemingly argues that the current downward economic trend of the western world is almost an irreversible occurrence. He argues that for the past 30 years ‘traditional forms of state intervention such as subsidies and tariffs ’ have failed to protect the jobs of western people from being exported overseas. Wilby explains that instead of using traditional methods, governments now believe education is the solution to keeping the western world employed. However, this so called ‘Knowledge Work’ is also increasingly being outsourced to developing countries, Wilby gives various examples to this outsourcing such as ‘Analysing X-rays,