During my lunch hour, I often cross the street to the gym for a quick workout. While I pound the treadmill, I plug my earbuds into the TV screen mounted on the equipment and flip back and forth between CNN and Fox News to catch up on the day’s headlines. What follows never fails to amaze me. These two media outlets, each watched by millions of people, exist in the same world but describe starkly different realities. It reminds me of the scene in the film The Matrix in which Neo’s perceived reality depends on whether he takes a blue pill or a red pill.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2018 issue (pp.152–153) of Harvard Business Review.
