The issue of media bias has been at the center stage of public talks for a long time now. It is a custom in which media in one way or another gives out stories which are one-sided or in a prejudiced manner. Different people have different perceptions and views on a specific source of media as well as the stories broadcasted. The conservative and progressive-liberal people are different in their values towards media biases. They have different perception towards shows, TV stations, newspaper, and movies. These have made many people differ and everyone to value media that they feel it’s good for them since it favors their side.
Some people feel some media stations take a conservative approach (Conservative) while other individuals feel some of the media stations take a liberal approach (Liberal). Fox news, in particular, has been noted to exhibit notoriety in having a right-wing inclination (Gonzales, Manuel, and Richard 48). Many times Fox news is seen as being pro-republicans. On the other hand, the other mainstream media led by channels such as CNN, MSNBC among others have been observed to exhibit a liberal inclination in the content they avail to their viewers (Gonzales et al., 48). The conservatives are often known to be orthodox, pure traditionalists and individuals who are averse to change or new ideas. The try to narrow and try to propagate specific scenarios over the media (Beckstein 18). On the other hand, the liberals are widely known to be accommodative to new ideas. They are open-minded people and give a comprehensive view and try to take all rounded information of the stories as they air out in the media. They show respect to other people’s ideas, which may be different from their own. The above applies to media stations exhibiting either conservative or liberal bias.
In the run-up to the 2012 elections it, the Democrat's candidate, and then Obama received negative publicity from Fox media outlets. Democrats are often assumed to be liberals. It is worth noting during the campaigns, 49% of the publicity that President Obama then received focused on his shortcomings (Gonzales et al., 48). Evidently, Fox Media news was taking a skewed approach. In 2011, an affiliate of Fox news made a typo reporting that Obama bin Laden was dead. The typo drew much outrage from a majority of netizens on Twitter. Also in the run-up to the 2016 presidential nominations, Fox news exhibited similar bias against Bernie Sanders (Beckstein 18).
In reporting about the results from presidential nominations race, the media outlet said that Bernie Sanders stood no chance since Hillary had twice the number of votes. On the other despite Trump having almost twice the number of votes as Cruz, the media outlet never ruled him out. On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC news outlet advanced more of an anti-trump agenda during the last presidential elections (Gonzales et al., 48). Apparently, they were seen to protect Hillary Clinton at all costs. In more than one incident, the station was observed to cut down guests who were anti-Hillary. It is also worth noting that it is these two media outlets that brought forth the news about the Russia probe. This must have intentions towards tainting the image of Trump. Lastly, more than 96% of the media personality donations went to Hillary Clinton (Gonzales et al., 48). Few of the media personalities either donated or vouched for Trump. In some instances, some of the media personalities blatantly admitted on live televisions that they were endorsing Hillary.
Examples of Media bias
Fox News cut Ron Paul immediately when he attempted to show how the media was biased. Ron was commenting on the issue of why his name was not given significant attention in most of the media outlets despite him amassing a considerable number of followers. He, in particular, lamented how his name was read once compared to the other candidate’s names, which was read more than five times (Beckstein 8). While trying to expound on the issue, he was cut off immediately. The partiality in broadcasting has made the media to be biased in the way and making it perpetrate other problems in society.
In the year 2004, media bias occurs in the incident of death of Michael Brown and Dillon Taylor in which it occurs within two days. In the comparison of the two cases, news about the death of Michael Brown in which white policeman killed him spread out all over the media. After two days only another young man by the name Dillion Taylor was shot by a white policeman by the news didn’t spread like the news of Michael Brown. As a result, the issue of racism penetrated into media bias. In another incident captured by MSNBC showed that the media outlet cut a black person who identified himself as a Trump supporter. The station had a predefined school of thought that all blacks should be Democrats, and thus that is why the presenter’s maybe cut him off. It is noted that the media give much attention and exaggerate the stories relating to racism. The news over present the stories of Africa American to perpetuate that there is injustice down to black people by white people. The media want to show that the black are victims of crime committed by the white people and to disclose racism is the story of the day. The way the news is being spread out tell more about the issue of media biased and result to issue of racism. This also has been propagated by the issue of conservatives and liberal people who judge a story according to their perception thus biasing it.
Based on a recent poll conducted by Gallup it showed that public confidence in the media had sunk to worrying levels. Only 32 percent of individuals trust the media outlets (Gonzales et al., 48). This means only three out of ten people have trust in the national news outlet. The main reason behind this worrying numbers is perhaps the lack of objectivity and fairness on the part of the media which in turn propagate the media bias.
In another recent research on ‘’Trump administration seen as truthful than news media’’ done by political communication professor Spencer Kimball, the polls show that 49% of people show that trump administration to be truthful while 48% find him to be untruthful. The researcher also extended his research and compare the confidence rating of news media and found that 53% of people say that news media are untruth (Leandra 6). The finds out that people have confidence in trump news that the news media. This reveals that due to media biases the confidence of believing in news media has gone done and the people can believe more on the news from another source in the long run.
In the above poll result about the media in the recent, it shows that the level of public confidence is lowering due to biases of media. The declining rate of public trust is an alarming rate. This has made the public to think otherwise rather than to believe on what is broadcasted in the media. The level of media biases is so increasing that drastically reduce confidence levels of the public. They should remain unbiased and spread what truth is and avoid being partial. A point of concern should be taken into consideration to avoid losing public confidence in the media since it may render it meaningless.
Work’s Cited
Beckstein, Martin. "What does it take to be a true conservative?." Global Discourse 5.1 (2015): 4-21.
Dugan, Andrew. "Americans' Confidence In News Media Remains Low." Gallup.Com, 2014, http://news.gallup.com/poll/171740/americans-confidence-news-media-remains-low.aspx.
Gonzales, Manuel G., and Richard Delgado. Politics of Fear: How Republicans Use Money, Race and the Media to Win. Routledge, 2015:48
Leandra Bernstein, Sinclair Broadcast Group. "Poll: Mainstream Media Continues To Lose The Public's Trust." WJLA, 2018, http://wjla.com/news/nation-world/main-stream-media-continue-to-lose-the-publics-trust.
RonPaul2012Truth. "Fox News Immediately Cuts To Break When Ron Paul Exposes Media Bias." Youtube, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfW-0621hE"t=47s.
Swift, Art. "Americans’ trust in mass media sinks to new low." Gallup (2016).
The Indegraph Times. "CNN " MSNBC Protecting Hillary Clinton, Cutting Off Guests, Media Bias." Youtube, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8_a-f1n-cs"t=138s.
