socio-politics

Yes, all media outlets are biased, and most of them favor the left. However, this does not have a very big impact on determining the part of the political spectrum that an individual will be on.

It is impossible for a media outlet to be completely unbiased; the media’s purpose is to supply the news that they deem most important with the intent of saving people time, and the selection of what is important and what is not will expose some degree of bias.

And I’ve been hearing far too much this year about how much the media is in love with Obama and will never say anything ill of him. They do favor him, but they have shown that they have no problem with bringing him down if it will make a good story. Just think about the two biggest occasions where his relationship with Reverend Wright were somehow made into the top news story - all of the major stations were showing the clips of Wright 24/7, and there was plenty of questioning as to whether or not he could be trusted, with CNN and MSNBC showing no reluctance in tearing into him. These stations could have just as easily allowed Fox News to have fun with the clips of Wright and instead teamed up to discredit the story as best as possible, though they decided to discuss the controversy.

Controversy is what media outlets like Fox, NBC, and CNN care about most. Being more biased has no impact on increasing ratings, though inciting controversy grabs people’s attention like nothing else. Just look at the Democratic primaries - it was statistically impossible for Clinton to win, though the media treated her West Virginia victory like she could go the whole way. Meanwhile, she only gained ten delegates from the victory, and when Obama was gaining several superdelegates a day over Clinton, it was hardly publicized. When billion dollar corporations are in a competition for ratings (which thus allows for more money and bragging rights) , they are not going to have some kind of “higher duty” to try and shape people’s opinions - they will do what it takes to get people watching.

And as much as people (conservatives) love to make the media bias out to be a devastating problem, how often is the actual impact of this considered? Multiple studies have shown people to almost solely notice bias in information that they do not agree with. The political inclination of an individual is shaped too strongly by more personal factors to be shaped by the media. And there are plenty of conservative media outlets to choose from, which possibly impact a higher number of people than the liberal outlets do; just look at Fox News’ claim of having higher ratings than any of the other outlets. I would hope they do, since liberals are split between MSNBC and CNN, while conservatives have a single source.

I am not trying to judge conservatives by saying any of this - if it were the other way around, the liberals would use it to their advantage all that they could. Along with liberal professors in all schools, the liberal media has become much too much of a trump card for many conservatives, though worst of all, it is mentioned without anybody really doing anything to change it. If people complain about something this much, they should at least have some way of proving what they say to be legitimate and it should be accompanied with some kind of solution. Otherwise, it just comes off as whining.

Another thing to remember in this election year is that it is hard to deny that Obama is a strong presidential candidate, while McCain is a weak one.  McCain does not do enough to help his self out, and it is too easy for the “Bush’s third term” junk to be played up.  Obama speaks well and does not have too many glaring holes in his ideology, not that this would prevent the media from tearing into him if given the chance.

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