CNN Report Misleads Readers By Failing To Provide Context For Cannabis Use Disorder
Adjective bias is also apparent in the report
In a March 19 story, “Study raises questions about the risk of using medical marijuana for mood and anxiety disorders,” CNN spends the bulk of the article outlining the alleged risks of cannabis use disorder and the supposed dangers of medical cannabis use by patients with mood and anxiety disorders uncovered by researchers at the Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital with the Center for Addiction Medicine. But the report buries a key finding: those who participated in the study experienced “greater well-being” and “improvement in insomnia.”
Presence of bias:
Structural bias occurs in two ways: when the organization itself is bias toward a topic or issue or when the story is set up in a way that buries other important facts. The latter is especially harmful since 60% of people who share a story on social media do so without reading past the headline, according to a 2019 Columbia University study. We can extrapolate from the study that the same percentage probably doesn’t even read the whole article themselves and their opinions are based on just the headline. We at Ganjapreneur see it in our social media comments, too – too often someone comments with a question that is actually addressed in the story.
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