David Becker
5MAY2017
Prof. Beckford
Research Essay
This latest presidential election has made it obvious that the mainstream media are puppets for the two major political parties in America. They repeated lie to citizens of this country and it seems that many people accept these lies as unquestionable facts because they feel that these are reputable sources for information. Not only are the words misleading but even the raw data they provide, the numbers, are often clouded in a labyrinth of pretzel logic. While the mainstream media is corrupt, the internet has allowed new chances for journalists with more honest agendas.
It seems that in 2017, we are amidst a transitional phase. With the internet becoming available to nearly every single citizen in America, people have endless outlets to receive answers to any ridiculously obscure question they may have. It has never been this easy to access large volumes of data not to mention how incredibly fast it can be accessed. This is in sharp contrast with how information was spread in the early days of our nation.
When the founding fathers were getting prepared to go to war with Britain just before the American Revolution, information was networked in a much more basic system. Leaflets and pamphlets were distributed to the general population and people used that limited information to assist the development of their opinions. With only limited sources of information available in that time period, it was easy for these avenues to be controlled in an attempt to guide public attitude. This strategy was utilized to gain national support for the Revolutionary War. The proponents of the Revolutionary War realized that public support wasn’t large enough to justify conflict, so King George III was besmirched by the publications of the 1770’s. This was especially evident in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” where Americans read, “Even brutes don’t devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families” (Paine). The founding fathers also did everything they could to suppress any anti-federalist publications from ever reaching the minds of the American people. The publication served its purpose and King George III was viewed as a tyrant by the American citizens.
Eventually, newspapers could be printed quickly and inexpensively enough for mass distribution. This took control as the main method for dispersing information and allowed much more data to be processed and absorbed by willing minds. The established Democrat Party was eager to utilize the newspaper medium to their party’s advantage. The Republican Party was still a relatively young organization and at that time were unable to get much of a foothold in the newspaper industry. This turned out to be a major setback for the Republican Party. The Democrats would use the power of controlling the media to their advantage for many decades.
As technology continued to build upon itself, radio would become the next medium for imparting information. This made it easier for more independent information providers to get their message to large crowds. The obvious advantage radio has over newspapers is that radio broadcasting is nearly instantaneous. Newspapers take time to print and distribute. Everybody remembers that classic headline, “Dewey defeats Truman”. The Chicago Tribune got ahead of themselves during the 1948 Presidential Election and preemptively declared New York Governor, Thomas Dewey the victor. A picture including Truman holding a copy of the newspaper is a historically popular photograph.
Initially, the radio was praised as a medium for the public that would unite the world for a brighter future. This optimism would later prove to be unfulfilled. The fatal flaw with radio broadcasting was that larger transmitters can overpower smaller transmitters that accompany the same region. This gave interests with wealth more control and power over the information that was spread throughout the country. It would not be long before political parties would be proactive and use the radio to spread their propaganda. This problem would roll over when, yet again, a new source for information deployment was invented.
The powers that held control over the radio industry transitioned that power into television. NBC and CBS are two examples of radio stations what would later become television channels during the 1940s. ABC would become a spin-off of NBC and those three stations held a triopoly over the clear majority of media for decades. These sources of information have a long history of leaning towards promoting liberal viewpoints more often than not.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been honest efforts to rectify the media bias. Some live discussions are conducted with a specific format to minimize their debate from leaning heavily to one political side. These are sometimes referred to as round table discussions or point/counterpoint format. Each side is given the chance to defend itself. This is not a perfect system, however, as somebody must choose who will represent each side. This can eradicate the attempt to correct the bias and may even become counterproductive depending on who oversees selecting one or both delegates.
Conservative television viewers finally got a voice with Fox News in 1986. Before that there really wasn’t much of any conservative voice on television. Since Fox News has no competition within its own ranks, they can stretch as far right, politically, as they please. This has frequently gotten the station into trouble over the years. The hypocrisy displayed by Fox News has been well documented as nearly every instance is broadcasted by the opposing political television stations as well as ridiculed on comedy programs featured on NBC and Comedy Central. Fox News has a monopoly over the entirety of conservative television news, but liberals still garner a much bigger voice. Since all the conservative viewers are condensed in this single channel, Fox News has the highest ratings of all the news stations in the country. This gives many the false impression that the right side of politics has a bigger voice in shifting public opinion. If the liberal news channels were all condensed into one station, that far outweighs Fox’s viewership.
The national press would seemingly change sides to support the disaster that is Operation Iraqi Freedom. While the media typically leaned towards the Democrats ever since the origins of newspaper reporting, the war in Iraq changed that temporarily. This is because, like much of our foreign intervention, it was a bankers’ war and nothing else. The narrative of the national press was intentionally switched to the conservatives. How this is accomplished is another topic of discussion and most likely involves extreme sums of wealth and SuperPACs. Political Action Committees allow for political donors to maintain anonymity which serves to obscure corruption. Publications which previously leaned left such as the Washington Post and the New York Times suddenly changed their tune for the Iraq War.
Global Warming is complex example of the media bias today. It is accepted scientific fact that the Earth is heating up. This can be easily proven by several independent sources from across the world. It is a fact that if we don’t eventually convert to renewable, clean energy, then much of our ecosystem will collapse and humans and most other species will become extinct. This is a very troublesome thought but the actual scientific debate is in the timeline of these events. Luckily, there are many scientific ventures underway, as we speak, which will use technology engineered specifically to properly analyze the threat of climate change and to what degree human activity is contributing to this warming trend. Any honest, intelligent scientist will tell you that there simply is not enough verifiable information to go by to assess the coming timeline of events. They would go on to say that mankind has obviously caused some quantifiable effect on global temperature. The fraction of which that can be tied to human activity remains unclear. Earth orbits a variable star, so solar cycles may account for some of the increase in temperature that has been verified.
What the media has been doing for some time now, is projecting the notion that if we don’t allow the federal government regulatory control of the economy, then we are all going to be forty feet underwater in two years. Furthermore, anybody who disagrees with the totality of this idea, even in a small way, is labelled as a climate change denier and these people should be castigated. There is a tremendous amount of middle ground between being ignorant of global temperature data, and thinking that the leaders of the Democrat Party are abusing climate change by greatly exaggerating its timeline and cherry-picking data in an attempt to hijack the economy to make us all dependent on the federal government.
The Republicans are just as guilty and the media of the conservative side of politics also cherry-picks and misrepresents the very same climate data for their own agenda. We experienced an unusually strong El Nino back in 1998 which caused a spike in temperature. This was then used as a reference point for a false claim that a global cooling trend was underway. The conservative media simply connected this spike in temperature to a later year of lower temperature to give the false impression that the Earth is cooling back down. This is insulting to the intelligence of American people as well as being incredibly devious.
The Obama administration made enormous strides in helping our country evolve closer to carbon neutrality. President Obama was able to reduce our carbon emissions greatly, but this came with a cost to our economy. With burdensome and expensive regulation, it becomes difficult for new businesses subject to such regulations to compete with established businesses. It is a much more complicated issue than the media merits. The media simply exclaims that if you’re not onboard then you’re a denier and these deniers should be castigated. The real issue is how fast can we transition to becoming carbon neutral without it having devastating effects to our economy. If we were all truly in imminent danger from climate change, then China would be subject to more substantial pressure from the global community and not just America. Especially considering that China is currently the primary contributor of carbon emissions and pollution.
The problem with our current administration is that they are personally attacking Obama’s legacy and rolling back too many regulations. Many regulations have benefits that far outweigh their minute effects on the economy. Regulations that don’t harm small business and benefit the environment should not be taken away. It is obvious that the Republican Party doesn’t care about the environment. They have always been vengeful about the Democrats having more power than them and they fail to hide it well.
The fact that technology builds upon itself and is growing at almost exponential rates should ease the minds of people concerned about long term climate change. Simple awareness of this issue has already lead private industry all over the world to develop many promising inventions that will help to utilize energy more efficiently and even take back the carbon emissions we have already pumped into our atmosphere. The internet may be to thank for many of these inventions as more people can brainstorm ideas over a network.
The popularity of the internet has allowed for more resources to become available to members of the general public who wish to do their own research to develop their opinions. The internet changed everything as it removes the fatal flaw of needing a gigantic radio transmitter or a printing press to broadcast your ideas to a wide audience. The internet has been popular since the 1990’s yet television is still the largest news source in the country. This is slowly changing moving into the future.
Even though television is still the number one source for news, that spot is slipping and its takeover seems inevitable. Younger people are getting their news information from digital sources. Jeffrey Gottfried asserts, “While solid majorities of both those ages 50-64 (72%) and those 65+ (85%) often get news on TV, far smaller shares of younger adults do so (45% of those 30-49 and 27% of those 18-29)” (Gottfried). Also, the percentage of the population that has received news on their mobile device has risen eighteen percent since 2013, from 54% to 72%. It will not take long for television to lose their top tier and the power that accompanies it.
Just because the internet isn’t as regulated as other media outlets doesn’t mean that political forces aren’t acting to push their agendas through it. Google is a contributor to the media bias in America. Right now, anybody can go to google dotcom and try to find out the definition of the word fascism. Webster defines fascism a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control. Google, on the other hand, chooses to define fascism as an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. It is extremely biased to label such a broad term as right-winged.
Google has also been proven guilty of filtering their search results to demonstrate a clear bias. Rather than an unfiltered process to narrow search results, Google can use filtering techniques to change top search results. Even beyond this is that Google has also been caught removing keywords from their search engine for political reasons. There are lawsuits underway over this questionable action.
Facebook is a commonly biased source of information that is used by billions of people throughout the world. Each user has their “news feed” customized using algorithms. The headlines of news relevant to your individuality are displayed, however, which news source the headline is from is manual and much more often than not reflects anti-conservative sentiment while glossing over any headlines which make the Democrat Party look poorly. It’s great that company owners and management have the freedom to involve their political ideas with their business. What is difficult to believe is that money isn’t being indirectly funneled to Facebook by the Democratic donors.
People who decide to retrieve their news information from the world-wide web get a completely different type of experience than those who watch the television. If you wish to verify something a politician said, there are several websites, such as snopes dotcom, that pride themselves on hacking the unescapable bias prone to human nature. This plan is not foolproof, however, as these websites often show different biases when outsiders perform an overview of their long-term findings. That being said, there are volumes of raw data available to anybody who wishes to dig through what they can find. A sizeable portion of the entirety of collective human knowledge is available to anybody using the internet. This information can be in the form of text, picture, photo, diagram, video recording, and computer generated imaging which can relay ideas that are quite abstract and difficult to describe with words.
Other internet sites have devoted their web presence to uncovering the truth and holding those responsible who lie, especially when the lie is intentional. Politifact dotcom is another example of one of these websites. They have also been accused of political leaning, however Snopes has been accused of bias the most. Bias is an unavoidable aspect of human nature and will continue until some sort of artificial intelligence is created that can somehow rectify this basic piece of the human condition.
The aptly named internet website mediabiasfactcheck dotcom is currently the largest website dedicated to addressing distortions of the truth. Their headline deems them the most comprehensive media bias website. Their incredibly organized system of categorizing their information is quite impressive. They came to Snopes’ aid as they defended allegations that Snopes demonstrated a heavy political bias pointing to the left on the political spectrum. They were literally fact-checking the fact-checkers of the fact-checkers. This is a notable example of how searching for even the simplest facts can become a labyrinth. While the supreme fact-checking website doesn’t declare that Snopes is unbiased, they evaluate the website as “least biased”. They then go on to reiterate that it is completely impossible to be unbiased. “Least biased” is the lowest rating of bias that the website has ever handed out so this looks very good for Snopes.
The media bias again became greatly noticeable during the 2016 election. The mainstream media still acts shocked that Hillary Clinton could have been defeated. When you look at the electoral map by county or town, the map turns nearly 100% red. Donald Trump, himself, was shocked at his win, even as arrogant as he is. The media seemed to have convinced nearly everybody that Hillary was a total lock and the results wouldn’t even be close. It turned out to be, arguably, the biggest upset in any presidential race in the American history. Some even believe that the media pushed their agenda so bluntly that it actually served to harm Hillary’s poll numbers.
Surely, it will be interesting to see who the future unfolds as the power over public opinion is slowly distributed to more and more people. More power of opinion will be returned to individuals rather than small groups of evil men. Thanks to the internet, the Federal Government is losing its stranglehold over the individual states and their desperation is quite palpable.
The leaders of the Democrats are influencing celebrities to blindly push their agendas and they fail to make even a miniscule attempt to be subtle. Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Steven Hawking have all suddenly started using their scientific clout to help the Democrats lobby for more power and control. Bill Nye only has a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University but is touted as if he’s as credible as Einstein.
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart have done everything they can to make it seem like Donald Trump is as evil as Josef Stalin. They say that Donald Trump is insulting and offensive and immediately go on to say something insulting and offensive about him. It’s this type of attitude that turns me away from major parties. They underestimate the intelligence of the average American and only serve to indoctrinate a small percentage of the public while annoying the rest of us. However, these small packs of gullible people become so frantic and detached from reality that they sometimes become dangerous and violent. The mainstream media is to blame for the resulting riots and violence. It’s the media’s fault that people are becoming this enraged since they are the ones painting this severely distorted sense of reality. The media is controlled by the federal government and the last thing the federal government wants is a peaceful society. Their goal is to incite just enough violence to distract from their malfeasance, but not too much violence as to start a civil war.
In conclusion, the internet is slowly defeating federal overreach in this country. Federal overreach has slowly siphoned power from the respective states and its citizens and that power is finally being returned. This is all thanks to the challenging work and dedication of the independent journalists. They are gaining momentum and popularity. Hopefully sometime in the distant future this paradigm shift can lead to a third-party candidate being elected president.