The Walls Foundation

The Strong Foundation

Media bias has existed for decades and it would difficult to trace the bias back to a singular point or event. It is something that has always been there, the difference being the bias has been more subtle in the past and it has not been until recently that the bias has been pushed to the forefront of reporting and forced people to truly consider the credibility of their news sources.

Ferguson Missouri 

I wanted to discuss the events that lead to my view of media bias and pushed it to the front of my mind in the world of politics. The first event that brought this issue to light for me was the controversial shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police. I remember watching the news about the riots and violent protests that were occurring and listening to the journalists sympathize with these rioters and jump to conclusions about the outcome of the case. Saying that there was no way that Officer Wilson was not going to be indicted. I listened to them present the facts and bring on these “experts” that laid out the only possible way that the events could have transpired, at least in their minds it was the only way.

Then when Officer Wilson was not indicted by the grand jury the riots intensified. I blame much of this on the media and the way that they reported on the incident. The people trust the media and trust them to give the most accurate and dependable information out there. So when the media reports something like this in a way that says it is impossible that Officer Wilson would not be indicted, then the people believe that to be the truth. Then when that does not happen, people cannot comprehend how that could be the case because it had been ingrained into their brains that there was only one truth, the truth that the media created. The media did not wait for a report to be released by the investigating agency before they made any assumptions regarding the case, they reported the limited facts they had and filled in the holes with their speculation. So that when the actual report was released, it could only contain lies because it presented information that was contrary to what the media had already presented the public.

If the media would have reported the facts of this incident exactly as they were and not speculated to put false facts in the minds of the American people then who knows how many millions of dollars and property damage and injuries could have been prevented. The media is a trusted source of information for the public, and the media has to recognize that power and have more respect for how they can influence public actions.

The Presidential Election

This recent election was definitely one for the history books, and there is still a great deal of information that we don’t know and will have wait for history to judge. I don’t think that we could find a better example of media bias if we tried though, there were so many incidents of it over the year and a half of primaries and the general election. We saw every news network show its bias. When Trump’s scandal broke about his sexually inappropriate comments made on the tour bus, we saw Fox News dismiss the claims as unimportant and the left wing media trying to just bash trump. We MSNBC and CNN do the same when news of Hillary Conspiring with the DNC for her party nomination. Each news station has a very clear political leaning and this is no surprise to any of us who follow politics at all.

The problem develops because a person should not have to watch 3 different news stations to get the whole truth surrounding a story, and often times people are unwilling to do this and end up watching their one favorite channel. This gives them a biased view of the world of politics and does create the well-informed citizen that we need to maintain a well-functioning democracy.

All of this media bias has been one of the largest contributing factors in the division of America. This wall did not get built overnight, it has been building for decades and has a very solid base. These are just a couple of personal examples that brought the severity of the media bias to light for me. If we want to start tearing down this wall and unifying as a nation we need to stop allowing the media to fill our minds with lies and false facts, we need to check the power of the media and show them that the people are still in control of the country.