Is the media always a good information source?

Answer 1

While media companies attempt to be fair, they are often biased simply on the basis of who writes the copy. It also matters if the management has a constant hand in the conduct of the company.

Answer 2

To some extent. Because this is the worlds best democracy and worst democracy. Now as far as the media is concerned, anybody can write anything and still be able to walk back without much problem. Whatever is the opinion, whether it is religion, politics, nature or anything there will be too many opinions and so anybody could not say this is right or that is wrong. So the people in the media can write almost anything. Some of them are guided by people with wested interest, but normally they are doing justice to the common people.

Answer 3

Take the following examples:

MSNBC wants to be an un-bias network - but with political co-anchors like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, their accomplishing exactly the opposite. They were removed for obvious bias.

After realizing the network could lose credibility, MSNBC decided to fire Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from their co-anchor positions with David Gregory and made them commentators instead.

The Associated Press creative editing

The media is trying REALLY hard to paint Sarah Palin into an evil religious zealot. The AP is willing to break the typically utilized laws of printing the English language to do it.

According to the AP, Sarah Palin said this about the troops while at church:

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,"

According to real life, Sarah Palin said this about the troops while at church (with the AP's selective quoting underlined):

"Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending them out on a task that is from God,"

The AP quote means "Iraq is a mission from God."

The actual quote means "We pray Iraq is a mission from God."

The headline is even more misleading.

Palin: Iraq War 'a task that is from God'

The AP not only doesn't mention the previous sentence, or the first part of the sentence they quote, they also essentially ignore the meaning of the very next sentence as well. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

This is a statement of humble reflection from Palin. To translate into terms the media might understand, its "I hope we're doing the right thing."

This story is bad enough that the AP really should issue a correction on it, if not a full retraction. There's no story unless you butcher the quote. It's based on half (or a quarter) of a quote, mentally ignoring the previous and following sentences, and even presenting the trimmed quote as the start of a sentence --forcing them to capitalize a word that actually appeared in the middle of the sentence.

Really bad.

See also

http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics1.asp

Answer 4

the media can be a good information source but .. it exaggerates things at times so the information is not strictly true and also the media will do whatever they possibly can to get the information.

Answer 5

While this is a popular belief among Republicans, there is no evidence to support it. And actually, the truth is the media are neither liberal nor conservative: they are corporate. Because the media rely on advertising dollars, they tend to favor programming that will attract more viewers/listeners/readers. Also, because a handful of large corporations control the vast majority of the broadcast and cable networks, there is a tendency to do what will benefit those corporations. This means lots of "reality TV" (cheap to produce) and not as much investigative reporting (expensive to do well). It also means news reporters are doing more with less-- newsrooms have been downsized, some cities no longer even have a daily newspaper, yet the heads of the corporations who run these media outlets continue to do very well financially.

The problem with asserting the media are liberal is that it is an example of "confirmation bias"-- people who believe the media are liberal tend to watch networks like Fox News and listen to conservative Talk Shows which tell them over and over how liberal the media are, thus confirming what they already believe to be true. But surveys from non-partisan organizations show that 95% of all talk shows are hosted by conservative Republicans. And while MSNBC has some liberal hosts and pundits, the majority of the network news programs are neutral and try not to take sides. In fact, surveys also show that mainstream media executives are so worried about the accusation of liberal bias that they over-compensate. Thus, a majority of guests on TV news shows are Republican (as many as 65% according to one recent survey).

Given the dominance of Fox News, given the fact that most talk shows are hosted by conservatives, given the fact that a majority of guests and pundits on news programs are Republicans, and given the popularity of a number of conservative magazines and newspapers, it is very difficult to make the case that the media are liberal. Yes, there are some popular liberal blogs and a few popular liberal commentators; but they are vastly outnumbered, even as conservatives continue to insist that the media are dominated by liberal views.

Answer 6

Media include newspapers, television, radio, magazines, web-sites, etc. Within each type of medium we find many different individual businesses and journalists, all reporting the news in their own way, some biased and some unbiased. When political reporting is biased, it is reported in such a way as to produce a specific reaction in the audience (the audience being a listener, viewer, reader as the case may be) who receives the message. Let us say, we have a TV channel that is biased in favor of the Republican Party. All reporting about the Republicans will then be favorable, and all reporting about the Democrats will be unfavorable. Republicans will be praised for their good work, and Democrats will be denounced for their corruption and incompetence. This will happen in all cases, no matter what the Republicans or Democrats actually do, and no matter what the consequences are of those actions. Let us say, hypothetically, that Republicans allocate money to build a school. The reporting is then, Republicans act to improve public education. If Democrats had allocated exactly the same money to build exactly the same school for exactly the same reasons, the reporting then is, Democrats waste money on badly designed school.

Answer 7

Yes, all media are in some way biased. The presenter must make choices of what to show and what not to show, what to emphasize and what not to emphasize, what words to use to describe what is happening. All of these choices can affect the emotional effect of the presentation.

Scrupulous presenters will try to notice the biases and balance them with something biased in the opposite direction. Less honest purveyors of news and so on will emphasize the biases to sway the viewers in their direction. This is also called Propaganda.

Answer 8

No. We all are.