In order to stay well-informed, people should get information from various news sources.
It has been debated as to whether people should get information from various news sources to stay well-informed. I agree with the statement that it is better to use various news sources for people to understand about an issue better for the following reasons.
To begin with, reading only one news source can be misleading. Admittedly, well written news reports can convey balanced information about an issue. However, in many cases, a news medium is likely to be politically biased and can lead to an unfair conclusion. When I flew to China few years ago, for example, I found some guards were standing around a building confronting protesters. All this confrontation was for a Chinese human rights activist who opposed the ruling party living in the building, and got arrested for that. After experiencing this incident, a lot of questions came to my mind and I read a news article about it. The editorial I read sided with the government and denounced the human rights activist, and I followed this opinion because it sounded reasonable. However, it did not take long for me that a friend of mine had a totally different view on the issue; therefore, I read the articles he mentioned and lots of other news reports about the issue. Diverse opinions and analyses from these texts informed me profoundly about the rational bases of each side and their pros and cons, and I could finally develop reasonable perspective on this issue. This demonstrates that consulting a variety of news sources can help one form an unbiased view on an issue.
On top of that, each type of news sources has different advantage. Whereas some paper news sources such as newspapers and magazines have advantage on conveying lots of information in relatively short space and time, other news sources like TVs and videos are effective mediums for auditory and visual information. For instance, I found a magazine article about a Japanese festival, called Sumago few years ago. Even though I could understand the cultural background such as what it is for, when it is done, who participate and how people do it, lots of questions about what the festival is really like kept coming to my head. It was only after watching a TV documentary about the actual scene of the festival that I could become passionate when I introduce it to other people. I could not either develop this true understanding of the festival if I relied solely on TV. In short, one can be well-informed about various aspects of a topic by consulting a variety of news sources.
To sum up, various news sources can help one get a balanced view on a controversial topic and also help them develop true understanding of various aspects of a topic. In this regard, I strongly believe that checking with diverse news sources is critical for staying well-informed.
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