Before i get into media biases and our confirmation biases, I want to share a story:

The story is called-  Stop Coloring, Pigeons! 

The homing pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeons with the ability to find their way home over extremely long distances. Because of this skill, these pigeons would be taken to different places and they would fly back home with the messages tied to their legs.They were duly rewarded with food when they accomplished their task. 

A disclaimer before I start the story-  It is a product of my imagination and  any resemblance to pigeons dead or alive is purely a coincidence. 

An incident that happened to one of the pigeons during a regular flight from a “Romeo” in one kingdom to a “Juliet” in another faraway kingdom changed history and the future!

“Romeo” did not tie the message tight enough and during the flight, the message fell into a large pot of scented oil. The pigeon managed to pick the message up before it drowned in the pot. The strong smell of the oil left the pigeon a little lost. But since it was close to home, he managed to deliver the message to “Juliet”. “Juliet” on the other hand was very impressed by “Romeo” for sending scented message. She thought that was a gesture that proclaimed his love loud and clear. The messenger pigeon got an extra share of feed that evening. “Juliet” reciprocated by sending approval for an immediate wedding ceremony. And the pigeon got a special reward during the event.  

Henceforth, the pigeon would dip the message in the oil whenever it flew that way. He enjoyed the extra love and attention he got in return.

Word soon spread and pigeons across the country started sending aromatic messages across. It did lead to some pigeons getting lost whenever the scent was too strong, and those messages never got delivered. But whoever managed to deliver, got good rewards. There were instances when wars between states were called off, thanks to the scented messages.

When the pigeons met, they congratulated each other. The pigeon that stopped the war was rewarded. Since pigeons can also differentiate between colors they decided to add a little color to the messages that they carried. Different dyeing units were identified by the pigeons along their line of operation for this purpose. 

From that day, the simple messages that were sent by kings, travelers, doctors, and Romeos started getting delivered with a little extra scent and color. The irony being that the sender had no control on the color or scent because the pigeon would decide the stop points on-the-go, depending on the water and food available near the dipping units.


There were instances when instead of dipping the message in red dye, pigeons by mistake would dip it in chili sauce. This lead to wars and heartbreaks.

Some pigeons realized their mistake and got back to delivering plain messages. But people had gotten used to getting colorful scented flavored messages. They slowly stopped using those pigeons which delivered plain messages.

Some pigeons stuck to colors they liked the most. Red, Blue, Green ,Yellow and Orange being the most sort after colors. Pigeons who liked similar colors formed their own hubs and shared special friendship. 

In this process the pigeons themselves started getting colored. The colors that they dipped the message in, splashed on them and became their characteristic color. The very few pigeons who were left uncolored were the odd ones. They were not regarded of much value during the regular pigeons meets.

In the euphoria created by all this, people did not notice the tweaks that were happening to the original message. Some letters got erased in the process. Some i’s and l’s got interchanged, e became c and m became n. There were no full stops or comas. Sometimes the colors were so bright that messages could not be read. At times, people could not even open the message because of the strong unpleasant odor. Sometimes the paper would become so soft that it would tear off. The sanctity of the message was taken over by the added condiments.

People who owned the dyeing units started “feed the pigeon” initiatives so that their colors would get popularized. The pigeons would get lured by the feed and ended up dipping the messages in those colors.

This continued for a very long time.

This still continues. 

End of Story

Story by Deepa Kadavakat.

Today, the pigeons are replaced by journalists and media agencies. This dipping of the message in colors of their choice is called Media Bias. 
A media bias occurs when news organizations or journalists allow their own opinions to affect the news that they report and the way they report that news. The bias could be because of the journalist’s policitcal views, due ro race, ethnicity, gender, or other factors that can affect news coverage, the advertising interests of the news outlet or its parent company etc. These biases lead to misrepresentation of key facts. 

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism states that “the relentless attacks and polarised politics appear to be worsening already low levels of media trust. Some of the most strongly distrusted news brands are also the most viewed on television and online.”

Now, this is where our own biases come into play. More often than not, we fall prey to our confirmation biases. Confirmation bias, or the selective collection of evidence, is our subconscious tendency to seek and interpret information and other evidence in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas, expectations, and/or hypotheses. 

It can be most entrenched around beliefs and ideas that we are strongly attached to or that provoke a strong emotional response.

Do you only get your news from sources that agree with you? If the answer is yes, you are in a filter bubble, my friend!

What is a filter bubble?
The intellectual isolation can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see and then give information to the user according to this assumption.

Technopedia

There are various sources that help us assess and measure the media bias of our news sources. The big question here is – Do we want to do it?  Did we get used to the colored scented, and flavored messages being delivered every day to us by those colored pigeons? Or do we want to identify and encourage the few uncolored ones that are flying around? 

They can be saved by a massive ” save the real pigeon” campaign. They have to be fed, appreciated, and bred.

Each of us can do our bit by not feeding the colored pigeons. 

I end this podcast hoping that we will one day have our skies filled with real pigeons, carrying messages and not colors and scents.

The intention of this blog is to steer our thoughts to the sources from where we gather our information and to burst the filter bubbles that surround us. The intention is to remind ourselves of our confirmation biases; that we will have to step outside of it to get access to the real narrative.

This blog is available as a podcast on Acnhor, Spotify and Google podcast.

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