Media Bias: Killing the American dream?
When we are very young children, our only cares in the world are that the other kids are nice, that they share their toys with us, and that at the end of the day our loved ones will pick us up and take us to a place called home. We do not care about the color of the other children’s skin, whether they are girls or boys, if they are big or small, what they look like on the outside. We only care if they are nice. When does all of this change? Is it when we hear our parents talk about certain differences? Or is it when we get into older grades in school and children begin to bully and separate by classes and or societal arrangements? Quite a bit of our opinions are shaped by the media, and how our parents, and how we, perceive the world as seen through the media’s eyes.
Whatever the timing or the cause, we eventually grow out of that phase where we love everyone who is nice to us. We start looking at each other with a fine-toothed comb, and picking apart what is or is not perfect with one another. This person is too fat, this person is too skinny, this person has bad skin, and this person has bad hair. Those are the thoughts that enter our mind because we are ingrained to look for perfection, nothing less. This thought of perfection and holding society up in the spotlight has been taken a little too far, and it has marred our view of life, and of politics.
The Unites States of America were formed over 200 years ago, relatively new as far as governments are concerned, to escape the tyranny and religious oppression of the English monarchy. We took all of the mistakes made by older countries, and tried to make a better, more respectable one. All men were to be viewed as equal and having the equal opportunity to find work and happiness. While the country as a whole has made large mistakes over the years, and lets face it, what nation hasn’t, they have prospered and grown to become an amazing free nation which allows its citizens to be whomever they wish to be. But that American dream is fading, and it is becoming harder to become a business owner, rock star, a rocket scientist or an American President.
So why is it so hard these days to work and become stable in life, and what happened to the core values that helped shape America into the great country that we all know it can be? Mostly, it has to do with our perspective of each other. In today’s society, the media has so much influence over how we see the world. This era of instant news and the World Wide Web makes the old ways of finding out information obsolete. High definition makes it so that everyone on Television or the Internet is scrutinized and dissected so closely that they have to be perfect. If a crime is committed, a trial by ones peers is virtual impossible any longer, because the media makes up their mind if a person is guilty or innocent before a trail is even held. Even if there is no crime committed, the media can make up their mind that someone has done something wrong, and ruin their reputation. All this happens if someone is not popular by mainstream media standards. This is not what the media was intended to do, and it is not good for society as a whole.
Take the 2008 and 2012 political elections, for example. So many great Americans were running for the ultimate American dream, to become President or Vice President of the United States. Instead of telling the American public what ideas they could bring to the table, and how they could make a difference, both parties made empty promises and ran harsh campaigns against their opponents. The American dream has turned into survival of the fittest, and not in a good way. Because of the media view on politics, and the way they make people feel about the candidates, the political arena has become the equivalent of a gladiator ring, a fight to the death. Why is there so much hypocrisy and hatred thrown around? It is not all the candidates themselves, but how the media portrays them and reports on what they are saying. This is where the fight begins. The media takes regular stories, and regular American issues, and turns them into a political debate. Here is a very real and current example of this.
Contraception
Articles on political news can do what they were originally intended, which is to present facts about what is going on and let average citizens decide how they feel about the situation. Or they can be written from the perspective of the writer, with a bias to them. In this way, they are generally written to persuade the audience of one viewpoint or the other. A very controversial issue right now is the debate over allowing contraception to be provided by every insurance company free of charge for females across the country. This, at first, would not seem like a political debate, yet the roots of the issue run very deep and affect both parties separately and distinctly. When searching the news media outlets for articles on this issue, we can see that every article paints a different picture of this issue, and can make the reader feel a certain way about it.
Providing a medication, that is not directly for an illness, free of charge to the general public is something new that has never been attempted in this country. It would save women in this country money by providing a service, and it could possibly save insurances some money by preventing some pregnancies and health care concerns. However it would also cost taxpayers quite a bit of money to provide contraception to millions of American women on a monthly or weekly basis. Also, religious based hospitals and organizations, which provide medical services or insurance to their workers would be forced to provide a service that they fundamentally do not agree with.
One article brings up the religious aspect of this issue, stating that Americans are feeling the pressures of the government and religion getting involved with one another. A poll showed that Americans feel the threat of religious freedom looming larger than ever with this debate over contraception (The Christian science monitor, 2012). While the article points out that Americans think that the decision for contraception should be left up to the individual, forcing some religious organizations to go against their beliefs is in direct violation of the first amendment.
Another article takes the same stance of religious freedom, however they add a bias to the article by stating the President’s mandate for insurance companies to offer contraception to a woman if a religious hospital will not offer it is an even more forced issue and takes away the religion’s right to decline the contraception on principle (Green Bay press gazette, 2012). The first amendment to the constitution states that no law shall be made prohibiting the free exercise of religion, yet it seems that is exactly what the government is doing in a sense (Early America, 2012). This second article takes the stance that the issue of offering contraception for free instead of having individuals pay for it themselves is unconstitutional for that very reason.
A third article examined on the issue of contraception takes a completely different view of the situation. This third article seems to think that any resistance to the issue of allowing free contraception is a women’s rights issue, and denying contraception is one step in denying all women’s rights again. This article says that conservative politicians are trying to take away all women’s rights and waging a war on women, in a sense trying to take our time back to the early 1900’s. They do make some valid points about the fact that contraception is not purely used for sex alone, and that it may be used by women for other health care needs (MSNBC, 2012).
However they do make some errors in their article, which may lead to the persuasion aspect, but they are falsifications. Looking deeper into the article would allow one to realize that this one was made to sway the reader into a certain way of thinking. For example, they bring up the issue of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh calling a women’s rights activist a slut. This article says that he “called her a slut and a prostitute for speaking out as a birth control activist” (MSNBC, 2012, p5). However they took his words out of context, and distorted the meaning to sway the audience.
Rush Limbaugh, while controversial at times, was making a valid argument about contraception during his radio broadcast. He stated that a woman asking for free services that are generally used for sex, and the amount of services this particular woman was asking for, was tantamount to her being a prostitute. He felt she was calling herself a slut because of the way she was fighting for the contraception issue (Hopelessly partisan, n.d.). This third article deliberately twisted his words and his meaning to sway their audience and make them think that he had slandered this woman’s name, making him the first person to publicly wage the ‘war on women’.
With the media taking liberties with our feelings, and with the truth on news, it is no wonder that it is harder than ever to find the truth about a story. It is also harder than ever to run for president, as any little issue becomes a political debate, with heated issues. Each side has their own opinions, and the media takes their opinions about the subject and sensationalizes them to make the general public read their articles over another media source. But in doing so, they also sway the way the audience feels, changes their opinion, and can in effect change the outcome of an election if they portray a candidate in an unsavory way. Mass media has quite a bit of power over the general public, and they wield that power in order to obtain ratings. However do they realize that controlling emotions and opinion can change the future of every American? Do they realize that their bias is in effect killing the American dream?
Early America. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/constitution/text.html
Green Bay Press Gazette. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20120324/GPG0101/203240624/Contraception-law-sparks-rally-debate?odyssey=nav%7Chead
Hopelessly partisan. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://partisan.blogs.hopelesslypartisan.com/item_11709.htm
MSNBC. (2012). Retrieved from http://todayonthetrail.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10703444-gillibrand-contraception-debate-will-cost-gop-votes
The Christian science monitor. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/From-the-Wires/2012/0322/Churches-and-politicians-should-stay-in-their-own-lanes-say-Americans
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