This Presidential election was a
crazy one at best. With the Presidential race finally over most Americans are
happy without attack ads interrupting their online streaming or televised
shows. By now most Americans are tired about hearing what new thing Romney did
or what Obama said about this one senator. But it almost seems that the media
isn’t and wants the fiasco of campaign attack ads to continue their bombarded
of controversy and pundits of both conservative and liberal speakers. As
already seen on most major broadcasting network, political analysts are already
talking about who will run in the future Presidential race. Why is that? Aren’t
they tired, after two years, of reporting about the election? Why haven’t they
moved on by now?
The media
as we all know has the power to influence public opinion. (Or does it?) The
media itself is a huge spectrum that we use every day without thinking about its
application. But focusing specifically on three major news networks (Fox News,
MSNBC, and CNN) we see that each do and each use it towards its advantage. It’s
not by coincidence that I decided to analyze these three networks. As many
people know Fox News is a broadcasting network that “leans” towards a more conservative
view while their friends at MSNBC have talk shows that “lean” towards a more
liberal side. The loner out of the two, CNN, is smacked right in the middle
between the two spectrums. While this is somewhat truth by only a few percentage
for each side, the news broadcasters have a couple major goals they keep in
mind, one mainly being on making the ratings high enough. So through Fox seems
like it “leans” towards a more conservative side, in truth more conservative
viewers watch Fox News then they do CNN or MSNBC. The network then provides
entertainment for these viewers, being the highest amount of viewers for the
show. The same is vise- versa.
Through
this might be great to have a whole network dedicated to showing the viewer
stories that reflect on their beliefs and views in the political spectrum, this
can have negative consequences. What happens when the viewer wants to know
about what’s going on around the world without it being shaped to conform in
the standards of the news broadcasters? What happens when the viewer wants to
know a piece of information about the world and instead gets a biased view that
distorts the truth? This leads to miscommunication and beliefs that are not
only held together by bias but are only feed more views that eventually glue into
a misinterpretation of the world around them. Then you have a problem with everyone
around you thinking that their opinion is right because the news says so, which
should be true just in a different contexts. News in meant to be a nonpartisan
outlet for the audience to gain information and form an opinion on their own. An
owner of a news corporation, or newspaper, shouldn’t implicit his/her beliefs
on the public. The news, especially in this day and era, is vital.
Remember
the whole Wiener scandal? Where the representative from New York sent sexually implicated
photos of himself to a number of women online? Remember anything about the
Arizona wildfires or the fact that Yemen was on the brink of civil war and
violence was breaking out on the streets? The news broadcaster knew that while
some Americans might want to know about what is going on around the world or
even in their own country, a scandal where a Representative was showing
pictures of his chest to women on online was much juicer and dramatic. Yeah it’s
sad that Yemen was having violence reaching to a brink of war and the fact that
Arizona was going through a wildfire and people had to evacuate their homes but
expaning on that whole scandal with the public official taking pictures of
himself will gain more ratings. The media in the end, after all that time they spent
on the Representative, got the eventually end to their scandal when he
reassigned only a month later after the leaked photos.
The media
is many things while it should only be one, a source of truth among the
thousands of things going on in the world. When this becomes distorted so do
their viewers. This fact had been noticed by many political scientists and
media analyst who call for a change in how reporting is conducted. So while news
knows that it needs views and ratings to make sure they can pay the electric bill,
doing so by feeding the audience opinions and not facts isn’t an ethical way of
doing so.
