During the recent 2016 presidential election, candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton could be seen glorified on the television screens of an MSNBC segment. On the other hand, viewing Fox News reveals a very noticeable conservative bias, favoring ideology from candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and John Kasich. CNN, thought to be the most neutral of the three, is only considered unbiased because it always has “at least one conservative and one liberal pundits” reporting on an issue (Garcia). News media rarely provides information unbiasedly, there seems to be some sort of political leaning to almost every news report. Although biased news allows for more perspectives and grants more information to the audience, the extent to which …show more content…
For example, Facebook, who claims to provide “data-driven and ideologically neutral” trending news, was recently under fire for having a liberal bias (Friedman). Conservative media leaders met up with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, to talk about this bias and it revealed that “trending topics were chosen by curators with a liberal bias” (Friedman). The conservative leaders invoked the idea that social media that provide news do so with a systematic unconscious bias. For example, a media site might invoke that idea that one is “kind of a sexist” if he loathes “the idea of Hillary Clinton becoming president” even if it is “for reasons both related to her politics and her public persona” and they systematically use this to “parse the reasons why voters do and do not respond to a particular candidate” (Friedman). These unconscious biases, used by many news outlets, are then manipulated to turn a voter’s views against himself, which in turn can greatly affect the outcome of his …show more content…
An increase in watching biased news has lead to another negative effect: many viewers opinions become much more polarized. MSNBC, whose own outlook on politics are typically more liberal, project news in the context of their views. Since the media allows for easy access to this news, their audience, with the same outlook, are thus not “forced to challenge their way of thinking” (Friedman). Someone who watches the news can choose, and typically does, watch news that is similar to what they believe. So even if someone argues, again, that “they can just switch channels” to other news outlets, that project objective views, they go unsee. This leads to very opposite political views that just become more polarized with more viewers, with the same ideology, watching. The audience then only watch their side of politics and people become defensive over which side is right and which side is wrong in terms of legislation and candidates for presidential or congressional
A liberal is a person that believes that the government should provide equality for all, while a conservative is a person that believes in limited government and that the government should provide the necessary freedom for people to pursue their own goals. Over time, it has been argued, mostly by conservatives, that there is a liberal bias in the media. Liberals have combated this idea with the belief that conservative media is devoted to making efforts to invoke fear and division in the general public. Though liberals make a fine counter-argument, it is easier to observe that the media is liberal-biased. The liberal versus conservative debate can be compared to facts versus values. Another reason for bias within the media is that a significant percentage of minorities, or smaller groups within the population that are often thought to be poorer, politically identify themselves as liberals. To make these minorities feel like the government is on their side as well as everyone else’s, the media must accommodate the needs of these minorities. Because of this, the media becomes liberal-biased.
Hosts, reporters, and commentators dug at President Trump and his administration in almost every single story aired over the course of an hour and a half. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow eluded that Trump’s alleged ties with Russia “will come out soon,” but she omitted the word alleged, a move that could trigger a slander lawsuit. This framing by both MSNBC and Fox advance a political agenda. If a media consumer were to watch only one of these outlets, that consumer would hear only one view on the world. I believe these partisan outlets can cause closed-mindedness and advocate against those with different beliefs to work together.
In the study, each source was ranked based on the political leanings of its audience. As a result, it ranked sources such as Buzzfeed more liberal than average while it ranked sources such as the Rush Limbaugh Show more conservative than average. However, none of the sources earned a perfectly neutral ranking (Wormald). The correlation between news sources and their audience’s political leanings becomes interesting when compared to the type of content each news source produces. Rush Limbaugh, for example, is infamous for his conservative rhetoric, whereas Buzzfeed is known for its lighthearted quizzes and comical representation of liberal politics. This reveals something about our perception of truth: biased sources allow individuals to ‘select’ the truth. When conflicting information is pushed to the side, it becomes nonexistent. Subsequently, the sum of partial truths interpreted by an individual becomes a whole truth in their mind, especially when partial truths are reinforced by mainstream media sources such as Buzzfeed or the Rush Limbaugh Show. This is harmful because, as Lewis implied, the entire truth is lost in this process and mutual understanding becomes harder to
Often times people utilize certain sources and watch certain news channels because these viewers can relate to the views on these sources. It can make one believe that his/her perspective is correct simply because that is what the new source is providing. Viewers watch news sources that share the same opinions as their own, because these viewers are just as bias as the sources; these viewers favor one side, as do the news sources. John Stossel, a Fox News reporter discusses the book “Bias” with author Bernie Goldberg, an ex CBS News reporter. John expected for ABC to read the book and disagree with Bernie on the ABC news channel (Goldberg and Stossel). However, these people were proud of not reading the book and gave it no attention. Even if one does not agree with a certain viewpoint, it is very important to hear the different perspectives because it allows the viewer to see and hear other people’s opinion. Because most news sources do not include all sides, it becomes difficult for an individual to
When Americans attempt to find the truth in the media, it is important Americans realize what bias each individual media platform has. In the beginning of television, there were only 3 major news channels. These news networks were: ABC, CBS, and NBC; also known as “Mainstream Media”. The mainstream media held views that aligned with American liberals and seemed to always side with this group and were the only news stations for Americans to view. Ultimately, since these were the only news outlets available, whatever views these news stations presented to its watchers, were the only opinions that the majority of Americans held. However, as time went on cable television was created and gave Americans additional news networks. In 1980, CNN debuted
The mere idea of bias media can make the consumer to fade away from the news. Timothy P. Carney, a senior political columnists, wrote an article that talks about this issue. He says that conservatives feel left behind and stop watching or reading that certain source, or even lose the desire to get informed. “The resulting slanted (and occasionally hostile) coverage leaves conservatives rightly distrustful that the news media will cover them fairly. This breeds the perception that the mainstream media is out to get conservatives, and this perception has truly harmful consequences.”. This is dangerous because the only thing worse than getting “bad” information is not getting
News sources carry the persona of giving biased information in the vast majority of cases-whether or not you may consider that as a “good” or “bad” thing. No matter what news source you retrieve your information from, there is almost assuredly a flaw in the way that news is presented to the audience, in order to try and persuade you to follow their bias. Oftentimes the bias is politically based; for instance, Fox News is believed to show bias in favor of the Republican party, professional sports outlets may be biased towards certain teams or players, certain articles or reports may be biased towards a certain race, and so on. The bottom line is no matter how significant (or insignificant) the news may be, or what the subject of the news may
Viewers are starting to realize that media bias is very prominent in the news, especially in today’s political climate. Due to the fact that there is so much bias in the media, viewers easily can tell whether a news channel is conservative or liberal. The viewer should not even know the political stance of a news broadcasting network. Although many look to the news to validate their opinions, many would rather be provided with just facts. Viewers are beginning to become more open minded and are giving their attention to media outlets who are more factual. People are now watching other news outlets rather than watching major networks, who have biased content. Bias and groupthink in the media should be eliminated because viewers are making a shift from biased news outlets to more factual news
The news reporters and the producers are the ones who make that news channel bias. The news allows bias within its channel because the news channel wants to get their views across to the viewers. On an online interview with Bernard Goldenberg, interviewed by John Stossel, talks about how he wrote an article in the The Wall Street Journal about how the media is bias and the networks need a reality check. Goldenberg also talks about how all his “friends” stopped talking to him. After this article was released Goldenberg was fired from his job because his boss was one of the bias people who didn't want to be bothered by him. This conveys that the news channels don't want to hear other people's opinions about topics that matter. This also happened
Let’s start by taking a look at the bias side of electronic media. Take for instance the difference between Fox News and CBS. Both are news stations, both are intended to bring us the news, yet the
Do you watch Fox news,CNN,or MSNBC,and they have changed your mind about something? Well than that news station must be biased.When a news station is biased they show favoritism towards a party,religion,cause,etc.When people are biased they alter the minds of the people.Our society runs on respect so when news stations are biased they affect our community in bad ways.Although when they use certain techniques and are honest they help our society run .
Media bias is a topic that has been in great focus of many political leaders over the past few presidential elections. However, what many people fail to see is that media bias has been around since the beginning of major news companies. Most Americans do not know what media bias is or how to identify it. That stated many people have noticed that most news stations are biased towards one religion, political party or even gender. This has been like this for decades however has become much more prominent during major wars, the great depression and many social and political reforms such as the industrial era or the civil rights era. However the type of bias has been shifted mostly from a war focus and the focus on exposing corruption to
When you think of politics today in America, what is the first thing that pops into your head? If you’re like me, your first thought was about Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. Your second thought might be about the major hot button issues in the United States today, such as Health Care, Immigration Reform, and Gun Control. Whether you’re like me or not, I’ve noticed one thing during this presidential race that cannot be avoided: media biases. The media today is a major part of politics, and often times is who we look to when deciding what candidate we want to vote for. Media biases involving politics, in my opinion, should not exist because it is unethical.
One of the easiest ways to see the influence of media bias is through the election season. Political propaganda has a major effect on potential voters during this time because of the magnitude of the event. There was a study done in 2007 that discovered that Fox News, who is known to be republican bias, had convinced 3% to 28% of their listeners to vote republican (Knight, Chiang, 2008). On the reverse side, readers of the primarily democratic Washington Post’s probability to vote democrat, increased by 8% (Knight, Chiang, 2008). What this shows is that in a
There are many arguments when it comes to this issue. Some people think that the media has a liberal bias; some people think that there is a conservative view. The real issue is that there is a bias opinion and this is changing the way that people perceive the media. According to Tyler Cohen `Media Bias Is Not a Serious Problem' it doesn't matter that the media has a biased opinion. He states that people are aware that the media is bias and because of that they keep in mind when watching. He also states that people want to watch stations that have the same opinion as them (2005). Most people to watch specific news stations that do have the same belief as them, but we should be able to watch whatever station we want and be able to get the same type of information.