Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stupid things.” This seems to be the sentiment of news outlets across the nation – ones that recently have been sensationalizing and spinning stories, therefore telling the news less. Stop and pick up a newspaper or scroll through a news site.

It isn’t hard to tell that mainstream media love to sensationalize stories, as they’re concerned not so much with facts as providing followers with enticing content.

Many outlets recently have cited a figure from the organization called Everytown for Gun Safety, which determined firearms have been discharged 74 times on school grounds since the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

As it turns out, the ways this figure has been used are highly misleading. If you look into the details, those74 instances include accidental misfires and suicides, some of which occurred after school hours. In fact, CNN determined last week that only 15 of those instances was anything like the one in Newtown.

Don’t get me wrong: that’s a startling number in its own right. The much larger number, however, has been misrepresented to a pulp as new media continue to misguide the public.

The school shootings statistic is only the beginning. In all facets the news has become really good at creating false narratives and twisted truth.

Some might wonder just how persuasive “straight” news can be, but studies have proven it’s quite effective. In 2007, economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan looked at the effect media bias had on voting habits.

The pair studied voters around the time Fox News entered the market, just before the Bush and Gore 2000 presidential elections, and found the news had a “significant impact.”

After Fox News’ entry into the market, Republican votes increased approximately 0.4 to 0.7 percent. At first glance these numbers might not be compelling, but the increase includes thousands of votes potentially swayed by a news source that was in only 35 percent of households at the time.

Statistics mark a fine line between news and propaganda, and they’re the calling card of partisanship. Perhaps the war for most viewers is the reason for all this nonsense, but it demonstrates a distinct lack of responsibility.

The public should be concerned that a Pew Research poll found satirical shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are more informative than some of the public’s most trusted news sources.

We can be certain that delivering the news is powerful, and those who deliver it can be, at times, responsible to no one. So we must beg the questions: Who watches the newspeople? And why aren’t they doing their job?