Americans do not trust the news. Surveys show that most Americans think the various outlets of the news media are biased toward one side or another and that unlike other periods in American history the rich and powerful have an undue impact on what it supports. This is supposed to be bad because voters in a democracy cannot make good informed decisions without good information. It quotes a right-wing media watchdog group of accusing the news media of “rigging this election and taking sides in order to pre-determine the outcome” with its “out of control” and “deliberate and unmistakable leftist agenda” in reference to the 2012 presidential election as an example of the sentiments at work (Keiner 403). It shows that this accusation goes both ways by quoting polls showing “that Fox news is considered the most ideological channel in America,” along with a Media Matters survey showing a distinct bias toward conservative syndicated columnists over liberal ones in newspapers nationwide (Keiner 404). Clearly there is a lot of proverbial smoke over the supposed bias and the rest of the paper is left to sort out how much fire there is to go with it.
The idea that biased reporting is destroying American democracy implies two things. The first one is that the news media has that sort of power over public opinion and voting trends. Unfortunately the source from this comes largely from the news media itself, specifically in the form of media watchdog groups which are themselves drawn from the same pool as other journalists and who have their own political biases. Leaving aside the ridiculousness of claiming that, as one professor puts it, “every mainstream national news outlet in the United States has a liberal bias” this also assumes that the news media can compel people who would not ordinarily vote for a conservative or liberal candidate to do so (Keiner 404). It is far more likely that biased news sources attract viewers and readers looking to confirm what they already believed. “Democrats trust everything except Fox,” as one quote puts it, “and Republicans don’t trust anything other than Fox” (Keiner 404). Donald Trump did not create a groundswell of Americans who want to deport Mexicans and Muslims out of thin air, after all.
The other assumption is that objectivity or being ‘fair and balanced’ is a good thing. The article makes the point that between talk radio, talk shows and websites such as the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post contemporary media has “helped blur the line between straight news and opinion” (Keiner 405). This of course assumes that straight news is a thing that exists and that it is a good thing. When one source says that “the public does not always differentiate between these partisan outlets and the more objective mainstream media” they are making the assumption that the mainstream media is not just as subjective and partisan (Keiner 405). Any interpretation is an opinion, and some opinions are more wrong than others. Thus, when Pew finds “that opinion and commentary, as opposed to news reporting, fill 85 percent of MSNBC’s airtime, 55 percent of Fox’s and 46 percent of CNN’s” the real question is why anyone would expect anything else. The alternative is repeating the same facts without interpretation over and over ad nauseum. Granted, this is the basis of the 24 hour news cycle, but that does not mean it is a good or desirable thing.
Journalists should not be objective. They should be honest. A journalist who discovers that one party’s politicians are holding secret crack baby gladiatorial fights should absolutely come down firmly on one side, and that lack of objectivity is part of what drives journalists to uncover the truth about subjects they care passionately about. The article does a good job of driving home this fundamental shortcoming of objectivity as a journalistic principle, though it could do more to discuss the issue of motivation and why reporters should operate off of a position. Besides, from a marketing standpoint no one wants to read a milquetoast, faux objective interpretation of events masquerading as a litany of facts.
Works Cited
Keiner, Robert. “Media Bias.” CQ Researcher 3 May 2013: 401- 422.
