The idea of someone creating and maintaining your opinions and ideas is frightening. Most Americans think that only happens in places like North Korea, where the government drills its people with false and ridiculous propaganda from the day you are born until the day you die. This would never happen in the United States, right? Right. Every single American has the right to create an opinion for themselves and their beliefs, one of the many basic rights given to us in the Constitution.
Then, the media comes in. The problem with the media in the present day is that the majority of news networks are pushing their own personal agenda, something that has (thankfully) been exposed to a greater extent in this political cycle. Facebook “news” sites like "Now This," "AJ+," and even CNN are constantly pushing liberal agendas, while Fox News pushes its conservative agenda, while claiming to be neutral, fair, and balanced media outlets.
The obsession with retweets, shares, likes, etc. has forced media outlets to cater to a specific audience, an audience that constantly voices their opinion on social media. Then, when these media outlets start cutting video clips and taking words out of context to generate some sort of misconception among its audience, the audience takes these videos/quotes as true, factual information and begin shape their stance around the information.
If you’re sitting there and thinking, “Oh, it's not that bad. Sure, some sources are biased, but I don’t let that affect my stance," then I ask you one simple question. When was the last time you fact checked something you read/viewed online? When was the last time you got your news from several different sources before creating your own opinion that can easily be argued and factually supported? If you are constantly fact checking your news sources and getting news from several sources, then congratulations, you are not the problem. The majority of you probably don’t do this, and I didn’t either until the last couple weeks. Once you start holding news outlets to the standard they should be holding themselves to, you’ll soon begin to realize how much you are missing.
Recently, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw a post I had seen around 25 times before. It was a meme that showed a photo of Donald Trump, and next to it was a quote that said, “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.” After feeling like this was in no way true, I did some research and found out the quote was 100% fabricated and in no way true. Can you imagine how many people ACTUALLY thought he said this?
Someone who does a great job of showcasing the effect that media bias has on people in general, but more specifically millennials, is the reporter Jesse Waters. Although Watters does not do it with intention of showcasing media's bias' specifically, the people he interviews offer an insight into the people who use “news” pages like the ones I previously listed and treat their information as factual. If you’re not familiar with his work, check out this video to get a taste of what he does. Yes, he works for Fox News and his pieces usually seek out conservative audiences, but this specific piece deals with people on both sides and is a great example of how uninformed voters/media audiences are.
My favorite part of that specific piece is when the young lady was asked whether she listened to any of Trump’s speech; her response was “sound bytes." Hmm, I wonder where these sound bytes came from. Most people want quick, fast news that caters to their political agenda. Even when people are confronted with factual information that destroys their viewpoint on a certain subject, they shrivel into their opinion that they base off of what they saw on the news, so naturally it has to be true.
The DNC leaks completely exposed CNN for blatant biases. These emails are extremely frightening, because the majority of people use these news networks as their primary source of information and allow them to manipulate their viewpoints.
At a time where whole interviews, complete speeches, or debates are at your finger tips, it is frightening to see so many people choose the lazy route and allow media outlets to create their opinion for them.
