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Mass Media Bias

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The mass media is the means by which the majority of the public gets its daily national and global news updates. It is supposed to keep us informed and be a solid foundation from which we can form our own opinions. Because of this, it is unfortunate that the media in the United States is has an extreme bias on political topics. Being able to gather political information and facts about the government’s actions is critical in a democracy, however our market based media system makes it difficult to find neutral sources which don’t attempt to alter our perceptions. The political bias portrayed in our media system is represented by its use of agenda setting, one-sided dominance, and technology, resulting in a distrust of the media. This distrust …show more content…

Most conservatives get their information from the same few sources, the main one being Fox news. While 88% of conservatives were shown to trust Fox News, right winged individuals show an extensive distrust for the majority of other news sites (Mitchell et al., 2014). In an interview conducted on Maddie Hebbring, a conservative undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, she states that her preferred news sources are Fox News, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She considers these sites to be straightforward and remotely fair. She also stated that she believes the media has an extremely liberal bias which includes attacks on republican politicians and an excess of liberal candidate support (2016). Hebbring stated in her interview that the New York Times, CNN, and NBC are difficult to view due to the political bias she perceives they show. She also admits that while she attempts to find more “middle of the road” media sources, Fox news can at times lean more towards her particular interests. During the interview, Hebbring voiced her frustration with the difficulty in finding completely neutral media (2016). This demonstrates how the media sources use the assimilation effect to their advantage. While Hebbring hopes for neutral media, she still gets her daily news from sources that are more conservative and admits that some may favor her opinions. She was also avidly against sources that are seen as having a more liberal tone. The clear distrust of the media shown by Hebbring as well as other conservatives is a result of the market based media system in the United

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In the bibliography of Cass Sunstein “The Things People Say” by Elizabeth Kolbert, she uses examples of some dislike towards President Obama to examine the ideology behind a growing trend of bias online media outlets ability to sway the “American voter” as Cass Sunstein writes. Kolbert goes on to explain that the ease and usability of the online world allows users to tailor their search results. Resulting in users amplifying their political standings and viewpoints. She points out that this is not always good because of the amount of information on the internet, truth is often lost and replaced with a more fabricated truth. Kolbert relates that these untruths in a world of technology, coupled with bias media, results in users with the same

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The book Bias written by Bernard Goldberg explains how the liberal media distorts actual news and as a result impacts society negatively. Goldberg joined CBS News in 1972 and retired 28 years later, in 2000. Goldberg describes the distortion in present day due to no diversity of opinion in the newsroom, so no matter how many news executives go on about diversity, about ethnic, and racial diversity and how much they say we need that to go out the full story about things, they don’t seem to care much about intellectual diversity or diversity of opinions. This is why journalist can bash on a certain side or cheer the other side and wont fear about what will happen. Goldberg views Conservative news as evil and liberal media as right.

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