The Fallacy Of the Media

For everyone who believes they are well-educated regarding the current state of affairs by watching the American media, let me point something out.
It’s been a long time since we had Uncle Walt at the helm of our media. Back then, there were most certainly biases in the reporting staff, but journalists took their jobs seriously. Walter Cronkite leaned to the left, but he was known by the inside staff as a straight shooter who wanted to get the facts to the audience without any spinning of the story.
Back then, you’d reasonably be able to expect feeding at the news trough and getting a fairly well-represented meal.
Today, the journalistic ethos is different. With the competition amongst so many spigots of news, the media has become less a font of news and more a resource to cater to their demographic audience. “Give them the news they want to see.”
That inevitably means that some things are covered, while others may not be. For instance if your demographic is primarily the early teens (I’m purposefully avoiding politics), then your news would skew towards reporting about the upcoming gaming events, such as the pending release of Fallout 4 or whether the latest rumors of a PS5 had merit.
Today’s news broadcasts are no different. MSNBC has a very specific liberal demographic. Many would assert that FOX is the antithesis of that spigot in that it caters to a more conservative audience.
I am personally highly omnivorous in my consumption of news. Given that, I’d want people to realize one thing about the news they watch:
THEY ARE CATERING TO YOU.
That simply means they’ll cover certain things and completely omit others. FOX attempts (as their motto “fair and balanced” stipulates) to cover both sides of an issue even in their opinion pieces, but I’ll fully admit they give more air time to conservative POVs. This of course infuriates many on the left, because I’ll admit that FOX seems to be the only major spigot that even attempt to cater to a conservative demographic.
MSNBC and truthfully all the other major spigots cover things from a liberal perspective. I only note MSNBC, because they are the furthest on the left regarding the spectrum of ideological representation of the news.
What is the biggest sin that the media is committing today? There is one and one alone.
THEY HIDE INFORMATION THAT DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE THAT CATERS TO THEIR AUDIENCE.
Say it isn’t so! No, it’s true. As a general rule, the media doesn’t lie – it isn’t simply too easy to get fined lampooned or otherwise lose credibility.
What they do is more insidious and a total disservice to the customer (meaning you or I). Their bias even in the “hard-news” reporting is exhibited by virtue of what they don’t report.
I’ll give one example (and no, this isn’t an opening for a pissing contest, it happens on both sides):
How many of you on the left had even heard that there was a case of voter intimidation by members of the Black Panthers in the 2008 election? There is even video of the incident and quotes such as “You’re about to be ruled by the black man, cracka.” Where voters were shouted at by men at the voting booth with nightsticks wearing paramilitary garb. By the way, such actions are illegal especially in voting booth locations per the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the defendants proposed no defense to their actions (there was overwhelming evidence that it did in fact happen.)
Let’s just say it should have been a slam dunk case where all that was left was sentencing.
However, with a new Justice Department head as of 2009, the case was dismissed inexplicably and to-date even the liberal poll watchers were aghast at the seemingly partisan behavior.
That incident wasn’t covered by most of the media. It was primarily covered online and by FOX. Let me note that this wasn’t an opinion news component. There were undeniable hard facts. Transcripts. Witnesses. But the vast majority of people didn’t know it even happened.
Things like this happen all the time. That being said, it’s an example not of left or right bias, but of journalistic malpractice.
The media is doing a disservice to us all and fomenting a deeper schism between the left and the right than has ever been. It helps with ratings. It causes people to pay attention. But unfortunately most people don’t have the time or energy to pay attention to multiple spigots, they focus on one.
I’d like to note that if you do that, you’re almost certainly ill-informed and should realize that what you believe you know may not in fact be the whole story.
Tolerance of other viewpoints would be nice as we enter the political season.
But if you want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, may I suggest that if you listen/watch news at all, you get it from multiple sources. Ideally those that are known to hold opposing demographic audiences. MSNBC and FOX are good examples. Between the two lies the truth.
It is up to you to do what Uncle Walt used to do for us.
If you do that, then you can truly debate the merits and tell others what you believe is really going on.
Only then can you say, “And that’s the way it is.”

• I miss you Uncle Walt.