Is Reason Right, or Has It Left?

In my first post, I said polarization was one of the things that frustrated me about news. I still think that. I also think it is very easy to complain about biased news while conveniently agreeing with whichever article annoyed you the least. I would like to consider myself above that. My Instagram feed would like a word.

For this assignment, I looked at the September 14 AllSides roundup about declining reading and math scores on PISA, an international test taken by students around age 15. The three articles came from the New York Post, The Hill, and The New York Times. AllSides places them on the right, center, and left respectively, with the Times specifically rated Lean Left.

The basic news was concerning whichever version I read. Across OECD countries, average reading scores fell 28 points between 2015 and 2025, and math fell 22. The reports also discussed digital distractions and how American students compared with students elsewhere. The interesting part was how quickly each article gave me something different to focus on.

The New York Post put AI and social media right in its headline, saying they “rot student brains.” Its opening called the situation a “brain rot pandemic.” Well, that got my attention. It also gave me an explanation before I had much time to think about the results. As someone who has already written two posts about my relationship with screens, I could easily accept that explanation and keep scrolling.

But the qualification matters: students using certain technologies more often and receiving lower scores does not establish exactly what caused those scores. The Post includes that uncertainty later. I think that is useful reporting, although the headline makes the answer sound much more settled. Readers who only see the headline will miss the hesitation.

The Hill was more straightforward. Its headline focused on reading scores approaching their lowest point in 25 years. It brought in Education Secretary Linda McMahon and discussed American education policy, including school choice and staffing cuts. That moved my attention toward what schools and government should do. Quoting an official tells me what that official thinks; I still have to consider whether the proposed solution follows from the evidence.

The New York Times spent more time on international comparisons and unequal opportunities within education. Its discussion of Asian school systems made me think about how teachers and resources are distributed. It also questioned how representative the results from selected Chinese provinces were. I appreciated that detail because comparing countries sounds simple until you ask which students actually took the test.

All three had something useful to offer. The Post made the technology issue immediate. The Hill connected the results to policy. The Times gave more context about educational differences. Their sources and explanations overlapped, but the emphasis changed what I carried away. Even a calm article makes choices about whose explanation gets space.

This is where AllSides helped me. Seeing the articles together made those choices easier to notice. Still, the Center label cannot do the reading for me. A position between two arguments needs evidence just as much as either argument does. I could pick the middle article and congratulate myself on being balanced, but that would be an impressively efficient way to avoid the assignment.

It also brings me back to the attention economy. Pew Research Center reports that more than half of American adults get news from social media at least sometimes. That includes people like me, encountering a story while looking at something else. A dramatic headline has a good chance of becoming everything I remember about it.

I still want news that gets to the point. After this comparison, though, I want to pay more attention to how it got there: who was quoted, what was checked, and which uncertainties survived into the headline. Having three articles open is a start. Unfortunately, I also have to read them.