When election time rolls around it is complete chaos for everyone, people get bombarded with information and opinions left and right with no idea what to believe. In the jumble of accusatory commercials, ridiculous propaganda, and unrestrained opinions America turns to the one thing that gives out only the ‘cold hard facts’ ……the media. Most all people are forced to rely on the media because it is one of the only ways to get the information needed to place your vote.But what if these facts we rely on are being shifted or portrayed in a way that supposed to sway us in a certain direction? Media bias is shown by which candidate a newspaper endorses, what stories a certain news station covers good or bad, and even the way that the news station tells …show more content…
They attempted tho answer this question by examining Fox News’ entry into cable markets and the effect it had on voting. Conservative Fox News entered into cable programming in 20 percent of American towns between October 1996 and November 2000. They took the voting data from 9,256 of the towns Fox News was present in, the goal was to analyze whether or not Republicans acquired higher voting shares in these towns by the year 2000. In the year 2000 Fox News was accessible in about 35 percent of American homes and the impact it had on the Republican party share was about 0.15 to 0.2 percentage points which adds up to about 200,000 nation-wide votes. This result seems small to some but when put into context of the neck and neck 2000 presidential election those could have been the deciding votes (“By June”). Some argue this is false because no matter what the voter is going to find and agree with the media that best relates to their pre-existing beliefs, but most studies done show a significant effect for one party or the other through the influence of