Is Media News Unbiased?

Well this is a massively loaded question. No one would respond to this question with a 'yes' because those people would consider this an irrelevant question. So I'll go ahead and take a shot at wooing you into believing that I'm not a subscriber to any conspiracy theory fan club.

Our economy corrupted the news media many years ago by demanding that they make money. There is no money in news. People want to tune in, get a few facts for the day, and any major story in under 15 minutes, and then check out. What show can make money offering 15 minutes, a single commercial break, and nothing that most would consider entertainment? If you come up with an answer to that particular question, then you have just found the key to your success as a T.V. producer. The situation is that simple, the news has to bring in high ratings so the network can charge top dollar for their advertising space and time, so the news section of any network can be considered profitable and beneficial to the companies bottom line and stock holders. This is nothing new to most people. They have noticed the slew of shows which remain on the air have a few similarities, while those with similarities to previous decades have been canceled, reworked, or pushed to the back of the line. The last option is to allow the network to feel safe about considering themselves legitimate.

The shows you see on the air are things like the O'reilly factor and his no spin zone catch phrase along with many others who I personally have no contact with or knowledge of by choice. I know I just defined ignorance, but the question of when ignorance is acceptable, if at all is to large to confine to this medium. These are what I like to call button pushers. They go from topic to topic trying to push as many buttons as they can before the show is over. Who ever mashed the most buttons gets a multi million dollar contract (Rush Limbaugh) to continue torturing people.

All that led to this point. The major networks who are owned by the largest conglomerates in the world do whatever they can to push peoples buttons to increase viewers and discussion about their shows and their hosts. Slowly but surely, reporter integrity, story importance, and public relevance have been shuffled around and out the door. When, to be published, a reporter must, or in this case T.V. host, lie and twist the truth around and around until it lands in a way that captures peoples interest, what they are actually writing about, or what the story truly is about are often lost or insanely muddled. No one cares that Obama gave his wife a fist bump on stage. Its a commonly used, more shall we say hip greeting that everyone has seen before. To get you interested in just what might have conspired at this situation, using words like 'terrorist', 'racist', 'derogatory' will no doubt cause you to stay tuned and find out just what happened! What they have mastered now, is keeping you there. People in the news have always been good at hooks, without them we wouldn't even pay attention, its human nature. But in this modern era of news reporting, they have developed techniques that allow the story itself to be so twisted that it creates interest where there is nothing to be interested in. Much of this is done with panels of 'experts' on the subject who have developed opinions I would usually attach to a hallucinations and drug induced mind fits. These people then spar with each other or with creatively edited quotes and videos of the selected target. Makes for great T.V. as long as the target they have chosen is someone you don't like. This is the key. How they chose who and what they assault for the day. They are playing to a selected audience, one they feel will net them the most money and interest. This is how you are biased, you have chosen who to play too. They cannot separate themselves from any issue because to do so would only allow a balanced and thorough analysis off it. In this age of reality T.V. we don't want to be watching the people from a mile away as the scatter around, their actions and words unclear to us. We want to be in the thick of it, feel that we are apart of the situation and can affect its outcome. To do so demands the show we are watching be on one side or another because contrary to popular belief, when presented with both sides of an argument, people can see the similarities and agree on a solution and in doing so remove any drama or longevity from said event.

They don't want you to be rational and agreeable, solving any problems that arise with patience and due process. They want you emotionally invested in the situation and its outcome to effect you in such a way that if you were to lose, more than just a wrong decisions would have been made. If Fox offered you a fair and balanced view of the situation, it would take them a few minutes to explain both sides, a few minutes to compare and contrast them and then you a few minutes to make a decision. Then you have your decision, you have no emotional investment in it so that new information will allow you to adjust the decisions appropriately. Do you remember how you got there? No you know the facts, you know what you decided, and thats where you stand. This provides no economic benefit for the person or people providing you with this information and decision. They want you made as hell and ready to tear anyone's head off who disagrees with you and more importantly with the person providing you this information. They want to develop a little army that will watch religiously from start to finish, be swayed with minimum effort to a particular side of an issue and refuse to concede any ground no matter the logic and reasoning used. This is why you can have 24 hour news networks. 30 years ago you had max a few hours of news on the air. While there is more news that does affect us, it is not in such a dose to require constant coverage. This demands that a news station provide constantly new and ever changing insight into a situation. Does anyone really care that Anna Nicole died? Yes a small handful of people that knew and liked her. For the other 300 million of us, all we need is a 10 second blurb that someone famous we might have heard of has died, how, where, when, and if necessary or thought of criminal action, why. Sure the story could be brought up every time something of extreme interest occurs, possibly replacing another story of lesser interest on the nightly news. But do we need to be covering every angle of a story that is round? You can cover a ball from every angle, and it looks exactly the same and will always be so. So how do you get peoples interest and force their personal biased to aline with yours? You change the ball into an unrecognizable shape with so many corners and sides that anyone person could find a new clue to the solution of this amazing story!

The news bias is driven more by economic and monetary demands than by a real motivation. Such as actual disagreement on a policy or issue. If people agree, then there is nothing to talk about. As is the world in most ways. To make that news you need only create another view, believe it or not, and then apply it unregulated upon anything you think will spark a bomb to go off. Providing you with days of coverage. Many of these actions are recognized and turned into stories themselves. Acting as publicity, because anyone reporting on the actions of another network won't go into detail or debate that will reflect negatively upon their position on the topic in question. So instead, they bring it up in pieces, poke fun at it, have a pundit criticize the person, and then write them off. Allowing a real debate will bring up the networks biased and that, is unprofessional.

This is a rant and an opinion and I would appreciate it if anyone responding below respected it that way as I will respect yours. Let the debate begin!