“There truly are so many more outlets that are liberal than conservative,” she said. Media consumers who are too cozy in their comfort zone can get stuck in a vicious cycle, Barber warns. “The more times you see something the more it begins to feel true, even if your mind knows it’s not. If you see something false enough [times], anyone can fall for it.” “When we see something different from our bias, we notice it very quickly. We think ‘that’s biased language!’ or ‘they left this out!’ But when we see something that agrees with our bias, we just think that it was good information.” Social media can be an especially perilous source of biased information. Posts that have a strong emotional appeal may lead users to like or share on an impulse.
Barber encourages her students to make the distinction between bias and reliability. Reliability depends on whether the facts are accurate—statistics, names and dates. Bias is usually political, either liberal or conservative, and leans in one direction or the other. Bias in media is not exclusively liberal or conservative. Barber, much of whose class is Chinese, examines in her unit anti-Chinese bias in mainstream US media. She then compares it to the attitudes planted in China Daily, an English-language publication dispensed by the Chinese government, which is similarly biased against the US. When especially subtle, bias tends not to affect the reliability of a news story. This effect is different from that of the entirely unreliable, fake news which has proliferated over the previous five to six years. However, any degree of bias in media can
reinforce the biases of a consumer. Barber traces this effect to the present political polarization in America. “If you take in news that’s always slanted in your direction, often unfairly, against the other side, you’ll begin to dismiss the other side as unreasonable or evil, when they are actually more reasonable if you look at things from their perspective, because there may be information that is left out or emphasized that would really change your thinking.” According to a survey taken in the Annie Wright Upper Schools, the most popular media outlet among Annie Wright students is the New York Times, rated center-left by Ad Fontes Media, an organization that tracks media bias. Students sharing the most confidence in the ‘mainstream media’ tended also to prefer more neutral publications, such as the Wall Street Journal. Students preferring Fox News had the least trust in media, reporting 26% below the mean.
Impact of a minimum wage hike by Parker Briggs
Under the leadership of a new Democratic administration, progressives in the US senate are building momentum for a federal minimum wage increase to $15 per hour. The last such increase occurred in 2009, raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25. “Because of inflation though, the prices of everyday things have increased since the last time minimum wage was changed,” said Simren Khan (USG ‘22). “I think that the minimum wage should account for that.” Accounting for inflation, Americans earned a higher minimum wage in 1961 than today. Patrick Graham, who teaches economics at Annie Wright Schools, explained the reasons for and against such an increase. “The debate about raising the minimum
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wage is that small businesses will have to pay more to workers, and then have less leeway for other expenses,” he said. In some cases, paying more to employees may move employees to a higher income bracket, requiring businesses to provide them medical care. Graham summarized the bottom line effect on businesses: “Your profit margin just slips down significantly.” To make up for this loss in profits, businesses may increase the cost of goods. If this occurs, then despite the increase in income, workers may not be able to purchase as much with it. The most significant impact would be on jobs. “I worry about what an increase would do for job growth and creation. Businesses will have to get more strict
with hiring and think, ‘Is this guy worth paying $15 an hour for?’” At some McDonald’s restaurants in California, workers at the register have already been replaced with computer screens. These screens take an order and payment just like a human cashier. “There’s fear that if you make having workers more expensive, those jobs will become automated,” said Graham. This, of course, is an extreme example. But the principle behind it remains true: businesses will look for ways to cut costs— and often employees— to increase their profit margin. “The idea behind raising the minimum wage is to give the individual American
INKWELL | APRIL 2021
