Information Wars: Media Bias in America

If you have ever been interviewed by the newspaper or been quoted for an article, what happened and what is reported can often be extremely different. The Washington Post came out with a article about the Bias in American mainstream media. ( Article) The article talks about how news programs like MSNBC & FOX have a very one sided form of news reporting and how there report to a very specific political group. With the media taking sides, its no surprise that the political candidates are also so polarized. Because of the political bias, candidates and officials have been using non-common modes of marketing to get their political agenda across. Obama went on the View, the Tonight Show, and on MTV to get his message across about health care reform. If the president is going to those channels for better exposure, what does that tell you about our news programs, If you have get on a  talk show to get the news out.

With new media forms such as blogging and twitter, creditable news is hard to come by. When some people in the media see "fact" as malleable and relative, it surprises me that those people could be given the job of giving us the news. This sad true is easily seen on college campuses across the nation with the students newspapers. Through my travels i have yet to see a truly neutral student paper. It seems that the nations future journalist are following the journalist method  that you have a story and you have to go find sources, instead of reporting on whats going on. Having run a political club on my campus i have only been approached by the student journalists only to be miss quoted or attached by the paper. If they can't miss quote me they don't quote me. This trend you can see on a national level with mainstream shows. They only bring an elected official on for an interview to support their views not to understand the person in question. With studies out that show that more people get there news from comedy shows then news shows, makes you wonder about the future of the American press.