The Events that are Left in the Dark | Alpha Abulikemu | TEDxKeystone Academy BJ
[Applause] okay good evening everyone in the summer of 2023 I want you a summer school in the US and there I registered for current events class in that class we all had to pick a topic to present and one of the topics that my classmate did was called biases in repres ation in the media what my classmate talked about was how in his home country there were two candidates running for election one candidate he made the mistake of breaking one of his election promises third candidate he did the same thing however one of these candidates were absolutely ravaged by the media the media talked about how bad he was how much a failure he was how you shouldn't both for him because of this but the other candidate he basically got Scott Fe however you see at that time because of the news I read I was a St supporter of the second candidate the one that got off SC free and so what I saw was there going be some difference between their cases when my classmate was saying was this misinformation thisly what I thought it was only a few months later when I finally saw an accurate reporting of what happened from an unbiased website I understood my classmate was talking about essentially it was correct the two candidates did do the same mistake we all know that biases they exist almost everything is biased some the tone of something is biased sometimes the style is biased sometimes the news website preferences of news is biased have you ever wondered why sometimes these biases in the news websites that we read they get ingrained into ourselves and we can't even take in opposing opinions much less investigate them look into them and understand them there are two main reasons why this happens and together they perpetuate an everlasting cycle of misinformation and polarization the first reason is confirmation biases now some of you might understand this term and some of you might not what this Essen means is that you would like to look at things that reinforces your worldview rather than things that challenges it for example when you perhaps you support a certain candidate like I did you will look into things that tells you that this candidate is good and on the other hand you will not looking do things that tells you that this candidate is a bad person to illustrate this in numbers I have B brought two charts the first chart it talks about media biases so there are two things I want you to focus on on the first chart the first chart tells the that CNN is mainly a leftest news outlet and fast news is mainly a rightest news outlet and now on the second chart the second chart was provided by pe Research Center this talks about how people of each political ideology what news Outlet do they trust and what news Outlet do they so we can see that liberals Democrats AKA leftists they usually trust CNN levels with 70% of people saying that they think CNN is a trustworthy Source on the other hand for conservatives and they can also be called as spiders they're basically the same fast new is trusted the most was over 75% of people who are conservative saying that they think that fast news reports news accurately now we can see a correlation between the political leanings of News website and its target audience essentially leftest news new news outlet they attract the leftist audience and the rightest News outlet they attract the rightest audience and this is further exacerbated by the fact that these news websites they know what's happening s they know that who their target audience isud they know that too say these dud websites they want to print news that appeals to their target audience so CNN they want to print news that appeals to their target audience of liberals and fo new do want Pro True News that appeals to their tet audience of conservatives this is the first reason that drives these viruses the second reason is the fact that overall there's no pure Independent Media except for maybe Wikipedia but that's unreliable according to my teachers so the thing is running a News website it takes time it takes people it takes money and usually you just can't take these time people and money other than air you have to get them from somewhere usually this somewhere is investors and donors these people who invest in these news companies they essentially can control of what the news outlets say so for example if certain news Outlet have its investor be someone who support a certain candidate then it is most likely that this news website they will print news that supports the candidate that the investor of the news website supports so fundamentally the issue of the news Outlet not being independent means that these Outlets will always have es in them they might be large they might be small they might be diluted they might be everywhere but the biases they always exist now essentially this turns into a cycle first there is bias in the media the media the news outlet they have a bias because it being not independent the editors of this news Outlet the investors in this news Outlet the writers of this these news articles they are biased and th this phrase of bias in the new tolet itself and now this culminates into the audience being biased the biases in the news outlets attracts the biased audience and these biased audiences they will only want to read articles that are biased towards their worldview and since this results in the confirmation bias of the audience this fent incentivized the media to print things that the audience likes and so this goes into a cycle the media prints new that the audience likes the audience in incentivizes the media to print news that they like and now the media gets even more bias and the audience get even more bias this is a Everlasting cycle that can only result in wiing radicalization now am I saying that you should not have opinions on subjects no that's not what I'm saying you should always have you should always understand what's happening with we making these opinions though and opinions and IDE ideologies they're often like emotions I have once been told by a certain school counselor that I need to control my emotions instead of letting my emotions control me now this also applies to ideologies and opinions you need to be able to control your ideology your opinions you do not want these ideologies these opinions to make you unable to even think about opposing views if you or opinion controls you then this results in radicalization and you being unable to know what's happening now this what I'm saying is also not that you should always be a Centrist you should always take the status quo as the best thing now sometimes these bi newed outlets in the future they might not be regarded as bias for example the Apple this at the era of slavery evolutionism was considered to be a bunch of radicals a bunch of extremists but right now will any any of you call the people who wanted slaves to be free will any of you call them extremist no the same applies for Martin Luther King at the era of J Pro many salners they consider Mar Luther King as an extremist however in the end he was right however in order to make your opinions form your opinions on what is happening we need to First understand understand what is happening people like the Abolitionist people like Martin Luther King they didn't do what they did they didn't think of what they did because they ignor what is happening and inste just form a new ideology by themselves they understood what is happening and to understand what is happening one of the key things you need to do is to diversify your med sources by diversify I me watching sources from the station now here is SL chart of certain media sources now this does not document accuracy of course and so I'm not saying that the ones on the center or left or on the right is good however in order to get all of the point of views on the certain subject and in order to understand what is truly happening we need to look at multiple new outlets and their analysis of what's happening and you can corate corroborate these information together and then you get what you can understand as real and using these information that you understand as real using this information that you can finally get to be accurate you can use this to finally form a informed opinion of what's Happening instead of having these stories be left in the dark for you now I'm sure some of you in this audience are probably thinking why is this important why do we have to watch News why I just get on with my life now the reason what you watch and what you understand about news is important is that you matter each of your actions although infinitely small it still exists it is you it is your people that goes together into one society and make actions you know that the large portion as infow war viers infowar is a far conspiracy website you know that a large portion of these people they don't even believe in climate change and while you might be thinking just let them not believe it I don't care 100 people not believing in climate change means 100 people who will not help us fight climate change which means we have we have lost 100 people who can who could have helped us fight climate change but who is now not helping us fight climate change now you if your actions matter so in order to make sure your action for good you need to understand what's happening and to know what is the right thing to do in this context which you form your own opinions based on your understanding of this world and to understand this world we have to know what's happening thank you [Applause]