A pervasive feeling has swept many Americans lately. This feeling is a deep distrust of mass media and the government. Many people have their suspicions that mass media is at worst an extension of the government, and at best promotes primarily its own agenda. It’s clear to see the direct effect that mass media outlets such as CNN have on the outcomes of elections. It is obviously a problem that the very people who are supposed to inform the public on current events and politics with unbiased, fair coverage tends to lean one way or the other on political spectrum. You can hardly go a day without hearing about the media’s “agenda,” either liberal or conservative. But what if this media overreach was partly the public’s doing?
If you want my opinion, almost all mainstream media is extremely biased. CNN leans to the left, Fox leans to the right, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. When these news stations are constantly broadcasting, day and night, their biased interpretations of the news, it can seem daunting to even find an unbiased news source. But I think that this could partly be caused by a shift in the public’s desire in what they want from their news source. It’s a little bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, but let’s take a closer look.
An example of how the media can influence political elections is the candidates that they choose to give airtime to. It’s supposed to be a rule, or at least used to be, that news outlets had to give candidates of both parties equal air time. It doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, at least not in practice. In the Republican primaries, the candidates deemed to have a “good chance” of doing well in the primaries received much more coverage than other candidates. This, of course, led to a self-fulfilling prophecy of the candidates receiving more coverage doing better in the primaries. But is this totally the media’s fault? It obviously is, in some ways. But in other ways, it’s ours.
Americans these days have short attention spans. We don’t want to waste our time watching coverage on candidates who have no chance of doing well in the primary race. We want to learn about the candidates who have a chance, so that’s what we watch. Consumers drive content by voting with their viewership. If the shows that focus on the “viable” candidates get better ratings than shows that cover “lesser” candidates, obviously the networks are going to cover more of the “better” candidates.
So what do we do about it? Well, we have to vote with our eyes-- what we watch. This is what will tell the news networks what the American public wants to see. They’ll always cater to that, because that’s how they make money. I absolutely believe that the media has a responsibility to showcase fair coverage, but they’re also going to show what drives ratings.
Although it seems most news outlets are very biased, there are websites out there that present the news in an unbiased manner (or at least, as unbiased as articles written by humans can be). In order to be responsible, educated citizens, we must look for these outlets and support them. Then, when we aren't absorbing such biased news all the time, maybe we could begin to look at the truth rather than peoples’ agendas.
