The only sites I could think of that might give me pause were political related and Wikipedia. My childhood was rooted in politics. When I was a little kid, I could name all of the presidents in order and had aspirations of one day running this country. As I grew up, however, I decided that that was simply too much pressure for lil' Kenny, so I decided to dream about something else. Still, my family loved talking politics, particularly my father and step mother. They are both retired military members, and as my dad always told me, military members traditionally vote Republican because of various tax breaks soldiers receive from the GOP. But while my dad is quiet in his political thinking, my stepmom is the complete opposite, with vehement opinions about everything. She adamantly defends any and all moves made by Republican statesmen. So of course, she loves herself some Fox News. Now, I am wary of any televised news, because lets face it: sensationalism equals big ratings. So when I lived with them for a summer a couple of years ago, I got a big dose of Fox News. Every. Day. I had fun debating with my stepmom over certain opinions given by Fox News commentators, but it still irked me how blatantly biased they were. When I started watching other news channels like CNN and MSNBC, I realized that they too were biased--maybe not as blatantly--in their news coverage.
To me, this has to extend to their websites. I don't have much experience with these sites because I primarily use Yahoo! for my news online, but these biases are a part of these networks' cultures, so naturally this reigns true for their respective websites. I know that Yahoo! probably has its biases too, and I think my preference for that site stems more from the way its laid out than the content itself, which I believe is still top notch.
With Wikipedia, it's obvious: with the ability to have anyone edit it's content, you always have to be aware that something might not necessarily be true. Now, to be fair, Wikipedia does try to safeguard against this with it's sourcing system. Most well-done articles have a plethora of sources from all over the interwebs linking the reader to the information that lies within the Wiki article. If a reader sees these sources, you can have a sigh of relief knowing that things are probably pretty good. However, without these sources, you might have to raise an eye to the content, or dig a little deeper elsewhere to back up what you've read.
I feel like I'm such a Wikipedia junkie now that I can tell when something is probably true and when something probably isn't. I also love reading the new article of the day when it is first posted while trying to find which section of the article has been vandalized. Nothing like reading an article about a 16th-Century king only to see that his attached bio has been replaced with the word vagina.
I guess the theme with both of these types of sites is to be wary of what you read. There is definitely truth to be found, but you may have to sift through the bullshit to find what you need. A keen eye will be able to do it; an untrained one won't.
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