How can you determine a source's biases? Why is it important to consider a source's biases?

Answer 1

One way to to look at where their funding comes from.

For example, a study may show that drinking 4 glasses of milk per day improves some aspect of your health. But if you check who funded the study and find that it was funded by Milk Producers of America, how much faith would you have in the result?

You might also look at political, ethnic, religious, sexual, or national biases. In each case, a bias may affect how the results were reported.

A bias does not necessarily mean that the facts have been tampered with. Consider a race in which there are three entrants. Racer B finishes second out of the three. A reporter from country X, who likes racer B might report that racer B was just barely edged out of victory by a single contender, while another reporter from country Y, who dislikes racer B, might report that racer B came next to last. Both reporters have told the truth.

Those doing the reporting aren't always intentionally biased. Sometimes you simply believe that the results should look a certain way and tend to reject conflicting data because it doesn't fit your preconceived model. And often your are blind to it being a preconceived model because you think you understand what it should look like.