“If we're going to survive and thrive as a country, people need to be able to have open and honest conversations with one another that help lower the temperature and where we get to know one another and feel like we're part of the same community.”
Those were the wise words of one participant in our latest AllSides Roundtable discussion. But US media consistently seems to fail at facilitating those “open and honest” conversations.
So what does “good media" look like in America? Do major news sources have a left-wing bias issue? Is US press freedom moving in the right or wrong direction?
During the Roundtable, we asked AllSides readers these questions and more. Here’s what they said:
“I don't think there is an independent media right now.”
There wasn’t much mention of what news outlets or journalists do right, and much more focus on where they’ve gone wrong in recent years. One speaker argued that the “shift toward journalistic advocacy may have been more of a contribution to our problems than any particular bias in the media.”
“It makes me upset when I see so many people being unable to read the news anymore or getting so stirred up by news that it ruins their life.”
Many expressed frustration that public discourse is dominated by opinion rather than fact. One speaker went so far as to say that "everything's opinion right now."
There was a shared sense that coverage of important issues often lacks the depth needed to reach common ground, and that feedback mechanisms to correct misinformation or poor framing are largely absent.
RELATED: Gallup Poll Shows Public Trust in Media is 28%, A Record Low
One speaker observed that biased news makes it harder to start from a place of established facts, while another noted that divisive cultural topics like trans athletes in sports and critical race theory dominate youth discourse.
“The rhetoric and the way that things are portrayed really strikes me the most, not even necessarily incorrectly, just the way that we read things really impacts our view on them.”
There was also a sense that political discourse has become more personal and divisive than in the past, with conflicting and contradictory messaging around broader political threats from both the left and the right.
“The press is being taken over by people who have enough money to buy out press companies that struggle to make ends meet now that print newspapers are going out of style.”
Participants questioned whether societal division is genuine or artificially amplified by media, with one speaker arguing that it’s "a little bit of both—both real division and artificially constructed division."
Many described the media landscape as presenting completely opposite “objective truths.” One participant urged consumers to actively read both sides to identify the gray areas and middle ground. Underlying this was a broader skepticism about whether the media marketplace itself, rather than the public, is the primary driver of perceived polarization.
“Realizing how often we do actually agree with one another is really important.”
Despite the clear differences between many of the speakers at this Roundtable, animosity wasn’t a theme. Rather, most seemed to agree that they all hold a shared stake in avoiding media bias and executing democracy in spite of it.
Want to have respectful conversations like these with your fellow Americans? Sign up for future AllSides Roundtables.
