by The Open University
Available in 48 free installments
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One of the characteristics of ‘good? information is that it should be balanced and present both sides of an argument or issue. This way the reader is left to weigh up the evidence and make a decision. In reality, we recognise that no information is truly objective.
This means that the onus is on you, the reader, to develop a critical awareness of the positions represented in what you read, and to take account of this when you interpret the information. In some cases, authors may be explicitly expressing a particular viewpoint ? this is perfectly valid as long as they are explicit about the perspective they represent. Hidden bias, whether or not it is deliberate, can be misleading. This could be particularly important in a subject area where there is controversy.
Can you think of any issues or topics where information may be biased in some ways?
We thought of a few:
Vegetarianism
Testing drugs on animals
Human cloning
Capital punishment
Energy saving
Smoking
Let us take an example ? look at each of these websites and consider whether you think they are likely to give objective information about the use of animals for testing new drugs.
StopAnimalTests.com
BBC Science and Nature ? Animal Experiments
RDS online
Home Office ? Animal Testing
With a controversial topic such as this, it is not too difficult to identify the viewpoints represented and therefore be aware of potential bias. In other cases it may be less obvious.
It is important to remember to look out for vested interests. A website about headaches which is sponsored by a drug company is unlikely to be objective. Here the vested interest is financial. It is worth remembering that there are different types of vested interest:
financial vested interests (protecting or selling a product or service);
media manipulation (a 'good story' to sell papers or push up ratings);
political propaganda (influencing public opinion);
government propaganda (influencing public behaviour).
We do of course need to be conscious that our own judgement can be influenced by our beliefs.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence
