John Burnside
Ms. Jill Stukenburg
English 101
3 December 2007
The Harm of Biased Media
Nothing is more frustrating then being lead to believe one thing, then finding out later that you’ve been lied to all along. A misconception like this can occur often when you began to believe everything you hear from the media. Though the amount and type of bias varies from place to place, it is very common in every form of medium in today’s world. When reporting the news, we should be told the truth and facts about the occurrences in the world, not one’s biased opinion of them. Biased Media hinders the public, leaving many of us misguided and uninformed.
When trying to avoid biased media, the first thing that you need to know is what exactly biased media is. Biased Media can be defined as the press pushing their opinion and viewpoints onto the public by showing strong favoritism in what they report (Ellis-Christensen). Rather then covering all sides to a story like you might expect, they tend to focus primarily on what they believe in. Common Biases lie in the political parties, usually with the liberal Democrats or the conservative Republicans. Another frequent bias can be found in religion, and in this country the bias mainly targets Christianity (Ellis-Christensen). Nearly everyone has their own, unique opinion on issues, but that should be left out of the newsroom. There’s a reason why it’s called the news and not the opinions. It just seems that that’s been forgotten.
Biased media can be found nearly everywhere and is pretty obvious much of the time. But sometimes, the reporter or writer is clever enough to hide their opinion. Attempting to detect bias in the media can be difficult, but there are lots of things to look for when doing so. First, try and notice if the reporter or writer seems to over praise a certain person or thing. Their focus will remain on the particular topic for longer than it should without a positive mention of anything or anybody...