Assignment #1: Bias in Cable News
If we have learned nothing else over the last year, we should have all learned that cable news can come with its own set of biases. As viewers it is our job to not just take everything that we hear on the news as fact, we must research so that we can better understand various things that are being reported on. The same goes for any information that we receive, we should always be prepared to do our due diligence to check the credibility of the source. Not only should we be doing our research but we should also be looking at sources from both ends of the political spectrum to find the truths of the matter.
There was a report released by Katz Media Group on Americans to get their opinions on how biased or unbiased various national cable news stations are. In the study, they found that 54% of Americans in this survey believe that Fox News the national news outlet is biased. The study shows that 25% are unsure of whether or not they were biased or not while the other 23% believe that Fox News is not biased. On the other end of that spectrum there ranked with one of the lowest bias rates amongst national news channels is Good Morning America on ABC. For GMA the study shows that 36% of those surveyed see the television program as biased, while another 30% see the program as not being biased in its delivery of the news stories.
While looking into Fox News to highlight examples of bias and how they come off within a national news outline I came across a video published by Now This News that was shared on CNN back in the spring of 2019. The video showed clips from various reporters speaking negatively or questioning President Barack Obama’s intentions. They ridiculed him for having taken two golfing trips that allegedly cost almost three million dollars to facilitate. Within the first few moments of the video, there are multiple tweets shown where Trump is promoting and speaking highly of Fox News and encouraging others to tune in and considers them to be a reliable new source. However, he did have one tweet in particular where he questioned Fox for having a town hall with Bernie Sanders, seeing as Sanders does not necessarily align with the traditional beliefs that Fox is known for. Trump himself realizes the bias that Fox has in his favor so he chooses to lean into the network seeing as it works in his favor. They even went on to question whether Obama should have been making tweets seeing as he was the leader of the free world, but while under Trump’s leadership over the last four years such scrutiny was not given and Trump was said to be progressive and meeting the people where they are on social media.
Comments
Post a Comment