The Issue Of Mainstream Media Bias Essay

Media has been playing a significant role in our daily lives by developing our personalities, enriching our knowledge and providing us with different sorts of information. It has a tremendous power in framing cultural guidelines and shaping political dissertation. If the information provided to the U.S. citizens is distorted, then they cannot make informed decisions on the matters of public policy. Thus, it becomes vital to the American democracy that the news media and its institutions remain unbiased, fair and accurate. Media bias happens when a media systematically and persistently emphasize one particular point of view that is usually below the standards of professional journalism. There can be various reasons for media bias, some of

It being the leading source of news since the printing press. We put our faith in the media to report accurate facts unbiasedly. Between 1983 and now the media industry has consolidated from 50 individual companies to 6. That means that though the impression given is that there are a multitude of sources to attain information, the messages being communicated are all one in the same. The limitation of media sources cause a ripple effect of limited information, allowing these companies to control the public’s perception on

The media today has become a topic of concern for many members of the general population. Am I getting a reliable source of information? Is this source withholding the truth and ameliorating a topic? If I know that the information being reported is false, how can I trust that any other information from this source can be trusted? These are several questions that a particular citizen might make on a day to day basis, and when the question of bias is thrown into the mix, an overwhelming feeling of mistrust in our media can ensue. Media sources today are siding more and more towards their viewers political views, and this creates a form of media-bias that can spread untrustworthy information out into the public. Depending on your media source,

It has recently come to my attention that not enough people understand how great bias in media has been to our lives. Each day we wake up and see near one or more biases in the media, lying at the foot of our beds. It is wonderful to be able to wake up and smile each morning because of this. Decisions are made based on what people hold to be true. History has shown instances where severly biased media. The most recognizable evidence being WWII and Stalin. "Because of the status quo bias, the media ignore any position that advocates radical change"

“The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict, and laziness.” Jon Stewart (Stewart). Media misconstrues stories to make us believe it is more sensational than it truly is. Jon Stewart defines the media to be bias because it steers toward sensationalism through conflict and laziness.

One of the major problems in the American media today is non-objective reporting which is also known as bias. This has been a trend since the early 1980?s and is very alarming for American citizens who watch the news for truth and honest reporting. Not only has bias been a problem in the broadcast media of ABC, NBC, and CBS, but it has also been a problem in mainstream newspapers such as The New York Times, The Sun, and The Boston Globe. For years, these media outlets have built their reputations on truth and now the trend is to lean left and not tell the whole story. Evidence of this has become very prominent in war coverage and election bias. Bias in the media is a big issue and causes

A survey reported by the Pew Research Center, a so called “fact tank”, said that 77 percent of the surveyed that they have less confidence in the media because of reliability and bias. The other 33 percent could have been unaware of bias in their regularly visited news (or could they could be confident in the way they find news). Varying forms of bias affect susceptible audiences more than aware readers. As one of the most used forms of bias, coverage or confirmation bias is used all over the news.

To understand what state the modern media system is in, one must firmly understand what bias is. Media bias is present “when a political belief or commercial interest distorts the level of reporting” (“Media Bias” 1). If a political station provides positive or accurate information to only one side, then the station can be considered biased. Another form of bias is known as sensationalism. Sensationalism is the creation of panic or fear by over-reporting or over-inflating individual news stories, often blurring facts or reporting speculation as facts. A modern and familiar example of media

Groseclose, T., & Milyo, J. (2005). A Measure of Media Bias. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 120, No. 4 , 1191-1237.

This source is a printed collection of works discussing the pros and cons of a biased media. It evaluated both areas equally however I found that the objective parts of the article were the most compelling. The article overall was unbiased and well balanced since it never took a side. I found many credible sources from the article that helped me pose a persuasive argument to demonstrate that every journalist should be objective. However further research was needed for I realized the article didn’t focus on the major disadvantages our current media layout has brought us.

One question we have to ask is, why the rise in the public’s perception of media bias?

A tool used on a day-to-day basis to shape political discourse, most often used in news media. Bias is inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair (OxfordDictionaryPress, 2015). Three news articles have been chosen for analysis on the topic of the MH-17, all with different opinions. The selected newspaper propaganda comes from ABC, Tribune and RT. One possible reason as to why these newspapers have varying opinions is due to them having different owners. For example, Rupert Murdoch, the multi-national owner of media outlets’ newspapers generally have the same viewpoint due to Murdoch instructing how he wants the news heard from his papers. The most common ways the news manipulate readers into telling their biased view of the story is through the use of language, the use of positive and negative words; selection and omission, ignoring some details and including others; and bias through use of statistics and crowd counts, inflation of numbers. Although, writers can also be oblivious to the use of bias because of their cultural beliefs.

Media bias is the bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed.

Everyone has a bias, which is good. Everyone is entitled to think what they want. However, it is not good for our media outlets to have bias when they are suppose to be the ones who inform the public on recent issues. News is suppose to be trustworthy non partisan information, instead it is just platforms for political parties and other groups to push their policies and further their agendas. A recent example would be the Texas church shooting. Fox News, Chicago Tribune and NYTimes are all good examples. They all covered the same exact story, but portrayed it in different lights. Media bias is most explicit in a article's headline, word choice and imagery.

Bias in media is easily identifiable in today’s modern politics, and news channels are the most common culprit, but there is still bias in online publishers for articles as well. The problem that stems from bias in media is the account of how each candidate