Speaker: Chas Sisk, Senior Editor and Interim News Director at WPLN (an NPR radio member station).
Sisk shared information and thoughts on the ways various forms of bias impact our daily lives by shaping the way news is portrayed. As League members know, appreciation of the power of reliable information and the importance of a free flow of information in a democracy is essential to a healthy civil society and informed electorate.
Sisk shared a quote from Canadian author, Roberson Davies, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend,” and set the stage for the hard work necessary for identifying and deciphering our own biases and that of the information we consume. Recognizing that there is truly no such thing as a neutral journalist we would do better to understand that all people have moral instincts and points of view that color their interpretation of the facts. Of course, not all who represent themselves as journalists actually are; therein lies the first necessity of literacy – identification of the reliability of the source and that source’s motivation