How Media is Biased

How Media is Biased

            Media sources contain biases to either conservative or liberal values. During the election periods, it is common to hear politicians blaming the media about liberal bias. The liberals accuse the conservative media of spending too much time invoking fear and division in the general public. The media has all the information, which people depend on while reporting stories. The media sources have the power to determine what to report and the method they will use to report a specific story. Also, the media determine the type of story they will give more attention than the other stories. In the process of reporting a certain story, the media source may be biased towards either the conservatives or the liberals.

The liberals believe that it is the role of the government to solve the problems facing society while conservatives believe that the government should only empower individuals to solve their problems. Due to the existing difference between the liberals and conservatives, media sources in America contains biases depending on the ownership of a particular media source or the journalists in a certain media source. Some journalists with liberal ideologies are biased towards the liberals while some journalists with conservative ideologies are biased towards the conservatives. At the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, the conservatives were upset by some media sources of bias against the conservatives. The United States of America Today editorial board claimed that Barack Obama’s administration was scandal-free (Crichlow, 2018). The claim that Obama’s administration was scandal-free was also repeated by many journalists including NBC News’ Tom Brokaw. At this time, some scandals were being investigated by the Congress but the majority of the media sources could not challenge Obama’s administration. The conservatives questioned the integrity of the media for failing to challenge Obama’s administration.

Conservatives claimed that the media was biased towards the liberals during the George Bush and John Kerry presidential bid period in the United States. Mark Halperin, a political director of ABC news sent an internal email to the reporters to not hold Gorge Bush and John Kerry equally accountable on favor of George Bush (Binderkrantz, 2017). Conservatives published the message on their website and accused the media of being biased towards the liberals. Also, on a different occasion, media networks failed to mention the cause of suffering for Venezuelans. The cause for suffering and desperation in South America was socialism. However, there is no any media source that mentioned socialism during the reporting on suffering among the Venezuelans (Rajabi, 2018). The media sources mentioned the hunger and the suffering in Venezuela, but they did not mention the reason behind the suffering. The ABC, CBS, and NBC failed to mention the government’s socialist policies as the cause of suffering in Venezuela, which conservatives considered as media bias towards the liberals.

Survey has revealed that most of the journalist are liberals because they support the existing government. In 1992, most journalists reported that a small fraction of all Washington correspondents voted for George Bush as compared to the American public correspondents (Kellner, 2015). The report was favoring the liberals, which suggested that most of the journalists are liberals. The critics about media have existed since the 1970s up to date. In the 1970s, most conservatives blamed media sources and journalists for failing to adhere to the required standards. Several policies have been established to ensure that the media is not biased, but there is still no fairness in the way media covers certain stories. CNN news media source has been criticized by the conservatives for being biased towards the liberals.

On September 2015, CNN conducted a poll to establish the percentage of the American citizens who supported Obama’s Iran nuke deal (Gilboa, 2016). According to the results of the poll, the large portion of the people interviewed disapproved the Obama Iran deal by claiming that Iran will not abide by the terms of the agreement. A small fraction of the people who were interviewed supported the deal by claiming that Iran will abide by the terms of the agreement. However, CNN pollster did not report the truth about the results. CNN reported that most Americans supported Obama’s deal with Iran, which conservatives termed it as bias towards the liberals. Every moment the media is involved in bias, the public losses trust towards the press. The members of the society have no otherwise than to live with the consequences of media bias. A significant number of citizens believe that the media is biased and they do not trust reports from certain media sources. Also, when media covers specific celebrities stories more than others, members of society turn to believe that the media is biased. Most citizens do not believe in the fairness of the media because of the numerous bias claims.

A poll was conducted in the United States to determine the number of citizens who believe in media fairness (Willnat, 2019). Some politicians use media sources during the election periods to gain the favor of the public. In the 2013 poll, data was collected from the United States journalists and the United States citizens. The journalist’s participants involved in the online survey were 1, 080 similar to the ones used in the previous 2002 polls. The questions asked in the interviews and the sampling methods used were similar to those of the earlier polls to establish the trend on the belief towards the media fairness. A public poll was also conducted, which included 1,230 members of the public. The results of the poll revealed that the media in the United States was moving in the wrong direction. 59.7 percent of the journalists interviewed believed that the media was not fair in their dealings. 67.75 percent of public members interviewed believed that powerful individuals and organizations were significantly influencing the media. Therefore, most members of the public do not believe in media fairness.

In conclusion, some media sources tend to show biases in their news coverages. Some media sources contain a bias towards the conservatives while other media sources show bias towards the liberals. Media biases are revealed on the way a certain media source cover a certain story. Some media sources have been accused of favoring certain politicians during election periods. Some journalists are biased towards liberals or towards conservatives depending on their ideologies, which questions their integrity. Recent polls suggest that most of the members of the society do not believe in media fairness.