Who me - Biased?

I would like to consider myself as someone who is rational, unbiased, fair-minded and generally only slightly left of centre. In reading today’s headlines in both the National Post and CBC, I have realized that at least two of those descriptors cannot be true. 

I like the CBC news headlines because (I have thought) that that news organization is relatively neutral, being careful not to put too much of a spin on any particular news item. For example, in discussing Trump’s activities and comment their commentary may be uncomplimentary, the coverage of the actual news appears to be fairly neutral. The fact that they could never say anything complimentary about the president, was in my mind because there was nothing nice to say. I could feel as if the CBC were unbiased in their reporting only because I agreed with them.

In reading the online edition of the National Post, one gets a completely different view of world events: the Canadian government’s proposed gun control is both unwarranted and useless, the Prime Minister is worse than incompetent, climate change is not really all that much of an issue and Trump (if people would stop picking on him) would demonstrate that he really is a good president.

When the mainstream media have such divergent perspectives of the news, it is not surprising that Canadians, amongst others, are confused as to what to believe. For some, we have been led to believe that we can trust the media to be reasonably accurate, others believe that the mainstream media can never be trusted. Unfortunately, the latter group find other, alternative media sources who they may blindly follow with no proof that those sources are any better. 

It is not that one particular point of view is always right or wrong. Clearly, there are some things that cannot be defined by black and white lines, there are some situations that do have two points of views and sometimes neither point of view makes any sense. It may be that in some situation there is no right way of resolving it.
If it is true that people only read the news that they agree with - then no consensus as to what is true and more importantly what we need to do about it  - can ever be achieved. If we cannot agree upon the facts, solutions will always be unattainable. The only choices will be to either to sink ever further into a morass of indecision or to accept a dictatorship where only one point of view is allowed. Neither option would appear to be viable long term solution to the country’s or the world’s problem. 

Other than not wanting the responsibility, the world would really be so much better off if everyone agreed with me.