I found Glenn
Green’s article extremely interesting because he discusses the fact that many
media sources are no longer objective when conveying the news. One can no
longer watch fox, cnn, or virtually any other news channel without realizing
that each of these channels have their own political agenda.
Within the article
Glenn discusses how Chris Hedges was forced out of the New York Times for
opposing the war in Iraq and John Burns was promoted for his pro-war views.
This is clearly an issue, because like many other Americans I want to learn the
truth, and not be subjected (maybe even brainwashed) by a company that is only
showing one side or skewing numbers to fulfill their agenda. In a perfect world
we would only learn the facts of situations, and not be guided to feel one way
or another about a certain situation. It is obvious that Glenn is furious with
this Newsweek video because he feels that it omits key information, and
minimizes certain facts about the effects of drone warfare. I can certainly see
where he is coming from, because the video is very simplistic, and seems to contain
propagandist elements in support of the Obama administration.
What personally
bothered me most was reading that the Obama administration considers any male
that is around military service age to be a militant. This to me seems like a
dirty way of minimizing civilian casualty statistics, and tricking us into thinking
that drones cause less damage than they truly do. I’m not sure if there is an
answer that will solve the media problem or Obama’s administration policies, but
after reading this article it is clear to me that there is a correlation between
politics and deceit.
One of the problems that I have always had with the American media is that there is an obvious ideological slant to many of the news outlets. Fox, with its obviously conservative/Republican overtones, is the most watched news outlet in the country. This is something that, to me, is a travesty because these Americans are being hand fed what the conservative Republican agenda wants them to hear and are being taught to demonize anything to the left of center.
ReplyDeleteAnd just to be clear, I'm not excusing the pandering of some news stations to the Left, either. I believe that all news stations should simply relay the facts. I don't even believe in "fairness" or "balance", because sometimes, there aren't two sides to every story. To quote a favorite TV show of mine: "some stories have two sides, some have five sides, and some stories have only one side." For example, If a group of religious Congressmen came into the House and tried to pass a resolution stating that the sun revolved around the Earth and that all textbooks in public schools should say as such, would you expect the news to invite both a heliocentric advocate and a geocentric advocate to come have a debate on the program? No. You'd expect them to come from the position of the facts: that this was a question that science solved a long time ago and that the Earth revolves around the sun.
I know that was a bit of a tangent, but I felt that it tied into the point of political agendas of the media.
The correlation between politics and deceit is that politics are deceit. Just a thought I had when I read your last line haha. This is why I agree with Omar Bashir's belief that it is necessary to have an independent organization review the facts surrounding the use of drone warfare and its discrepancies in the hopes to make unbiased determinations that will more accurately assess the ethical nature of strikes.
ReplyDeleteI agree that media sources are no longer objective. Nowadays we do not even know if we are receiving accurate information because each station is relaying different information. The majority of Americans are not receiving plausible information and therefore are uninformed with a lot of the major issues.
ReplyDeleteI'm a journalism major, so this reading was especially interesting to me. I think it should be worth noting that a journalist doesn't necessarily have to be unbiased, he/she just has to report as such. Fox News and MSNBC, both different ends of the spectrum, do have quality journalists on there. It's the commentators, the ones who get mistaken for journalists, that have the opinions and let them be known.
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