What the News Broadcasters like to do with their time

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.