When you communicate something, if somebody receives it, you have some sort of effect on that person. When you share something, you might think (even if briefly) about what effect you are trying to have.
Similarly, when other people write or communicate something, they too have some intention. There is always an intention behind every communication. There is a reason a headline is phrased the way that it is. There is a reason that certain articles or posts are written the way that they are–because they are intended to have a specific effect. So on the other side of this, when you look at a communication, think about the intention of the author–what effect are they actually trying to have? Keep in mind that they might bias everything they are writing in an attempt to have that effect. The intention might not be (in fact, usually isn’t) to “just give people some data.” There is almost always some other intention. Even sometimes in casual Facebook posts, there is some other intention, like “I would like to get some attention.”
It doesn’t require vast evil or some complicated conspiracy for one writer (or one news editor, more accurately, if you understand how news organizations work) to have one intention to have one effect on you. And the intention is very often not “to help the reader.” There’s sometimes a little bit of that intention, but it’s usually confused with a lot of other intentions, such as forwarding some message that the author believes in, getting people to read/watch (because that’s how the news organizations survive), trying to prove somebody else wrong, or sometimes simply masked hatred of something.
So please, keep that in mind, and read those communications with that understanding.
Max Kanat-Alexander 