15 October 2026
By Roger Kennedy
roger@TheCork.ie
Is your morning news telling you how to feel? While many news consumers check the news every day, most assume they are getting a straight account of what has happened. But, biased news isn’t always so easy to recognize. The news is written by people who make decisions about which words to use, which details to include (or omit), and which perspectives to include within a story. Those choices can add up quickly.
Bias Isn’t Just in Political Coverage
Bias is often most obvious in political news coverage. News outlets may promote stories in favor of or against certain political views. Coverage may be heavier for political viewpoints or stories that are most favorable, rather than covering all angles of a political news story evenly.
But, bias is not confined to politics. It can cross a wide range of topics including healthcare, human rights, or even local stories, such as ones on economics or personal accounts of certain recent events. Take two examples of news stories, one focused on politics and one focused on local news.
In the political news story, a report about preparing for a united Ireland might focus only on the benefits and logistics of a transition. It might leave out the views of people who oppose the idea or have concerns about how it could be carried out. Nothing in a story has to be false for it to be biased. But by intentionally leaving voices out of the coverage, it gives readers only part of the picture: a story of omission rather than commission.
In the local news story, a news reporter is warning against a certain vaccine because of one local resident’s account of their body not responding well to the side effects. The story uses a click-bait title and emotionally charged language to try and persuade readers through fear to avoid this vaccine. This would also be considered a form of bias, even if the story is focused on a single personal account, so no other sides were omitted from coverage. Sometimes bias can be through persuasive language, or pushing readers towards a certain feeling, rather than sharing a blatant opinion. This type of bias can be harder to detect.
The Solution to Finding Unbiased News Coverage
Finding unbiased news on your own may be hard to do on a daily basis, especially for readers who want to consume the news casually to stay informed and then continue on with their day. There are unbiased news sources that can help.
Through the help of AI, Echo Harbor News reviews existing articles, identifies bias, and removes it to present readers with only facts. Readers can even find unbiased political news, presented through different lenses that identify the bias and the news’ stories impact on things like economic or geopolitics, for example.
Readers do not have to spend hours scraping through articles themselves, trying to do the manual work of identifying subtleties that make an article biased. Through an unbiased news source, they can read the news comfortably while AI does the work of identifying emotionally-charged language, one-sided coverage, or persuasive language.