No one will look out for your interests more than you. Such is still the case in journalism and media in general today. It’s extremely difficult to find any unbiased sources for news and information. It’s gotten to the point where you should hope a reporter or a writer doesn’t care about the outcome so you can get a fair assessment of both sides.
Patrick Olds
– Opinions Editor –
No one will look out for your interests more than you. Such is still the case in journalism and media in general today. It’s extremely difficult to find any unbiased sources for news and information. It’s gotten to the point where you should hope a reporter or a writer doesn’t care about the outcome so you can get a fair assessment of both sides.
This fall and beyond is going to be crucial to understanding current events and news. Whether our country is going through change for the better or the worse is one’s own opinion, but the voting blocs that mostly make up the college students have historically been apathetic toward elections.
Even with the momentum of President Barack Obama and hopes that a young voting bloc would come out to support him, that wasn’t the case. With health care, immigration and energy reforms either passed or in the works, this country has serious issues to consider and the upcoming fall elections should tell the president either to keep going with his agenda or to slow it down.
Starting with television news, there are no channels that are unbiased. If you name a news channel or program, it’s very easy to predict how they will tilt. Whether it’s the conservative Fox News or the liberal MSNBC, it doesn’t mean that you should tune them out completely. People have to be able to put on a filter to get to the facts or the truth.
Most of the major networks such as NBC, CBS, and ABC tend to tilt left of center or liberal and that also is not a bad thing. It’s human nature to have bias. You just have to be able to understand where your information is coming from. Citing sources is very important to print and televised media. Most of us won’t check sources, but if it’s a story of interest to you, the sources should always be there otherwise you might be receiving an opinion rather than a report.
In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, there were 222 journalists and news executives at national outlets.
The results were that 50 percent said they were unbiased or centrist. The other half (that actually told the truth) came to an interesting stat: more than four times as many journalists identified as being liberal as opposed to being conservative.
News media should all be taken in; no one should block out a certain channel or person just because they have come under an ad hominem attack. If people are talking about a person or channel, they are most likely intimidated by those factors.
A good example of this is Glenn Beck and Fox News. These factors are almost used synonymously with curse words. If you hear that, you should be encouraged to watch the show for yourself without any assumptions and take from them what you will. Don’t allow other people to judge and decipher the strength of the information.
With that in mind, I still have a good opinion of who gives the best interviews on television. By best I mean most information and tough questions to both sides. Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” and Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” are quite different but both have great ability at asking tough questions. Stewart is a self-identified liberal but will make fun of liberals when it’s blatantly clear they have made mistakes.
This isn’t about getting one person to believe or go along with an opinion of any of these networks. It is all about looking out for one’s self-interests and, in order to do that, you have to access the best information and get as close to the facts as possible. If you can stand going between the different viewpoints, I would advise a compare and contrast of news, current events and policy between all of the networks so that everyone can better acquire the truth. This fall will be quite an important time for all of us; I suggest you start paying attention.
