High school students’ views on the ever-differentiating news have changed significantly since the most recent presidential election of 2016.

Most, if not all, high school students have found the news less reliable than two years ago. It all started when the uproar of dynamic opinions surrounding political beliefs increased in late July of 2016 when the Democratic and Republican nominees were announced.

“There seems to be a lot of fake news these days, so you never know what’s true and not true until you get a reliable source,” Heidi Hansen, freshman, said.

Through a voluntary poll on Google Forms taken by 37 Manhattan High students, students were asked a number of questions including how reliable the news is to them on a scale of one to five, one being not at all and five being completely. Results showed that 40.5 percent of high school students who took the poll find the reliability of the news at a three and 35.21 percent find it at a four. Only 8.1 percent rate the news as completely truthful.

Those same high school students have also reportedly found the news more heavily affected by politics since the most recent presidential election, which has caused an identifiable change in the way they perceive the news today.

“[Reporters today] are very dramatic,” Grace Hutchinson, freshman, said. “Most of the time I struggle to believe the people on TV.”

Despite the way the news is structured today, I’m proud to say that instead of avoiding news outlets completely, especially those geared more toward political topics, a number of high school students make a point to find out for themselves what is true and what is false.

“[Since the most recent presidential election] I make sure I’m more aware about things that are happening, and if I feel like I want an opinion on something, I will research it more,” Rachel Edie, freshman, said.

One suggested a way to know whether a news report is truthful is to look at their past articles and televised segments.

“Their past articles and televised segments can tell a lot,” Kilian Foust, junior, said. “I prefer to fact check before giving my trust to one publication or another.”

Regardless of the fact that since 2016 high school students’ views on the news have changed and that the news presently is painfully controversial, I believe that all high school students should educate themselves on what’s truly going on in the world. Seeing as 59.5 percent of high school students today consume the news daily, having false conclusions made from corrupt news reports could gravely affect our future judgments.