Fair and Balanced

Fair and Balanced

If mass media is not already the biggest influence on the American people today, it is quickly becoming so.   Americans are drowning in it, which shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.   Mass media is how we as members of our society get the information or entertainment we either want or need, and it's also how we get what we don't want or need.   With today's technology, it's hard for some of us to imagine our lives without our favorite media outlets such as film, radio, and television.   News that a couple of centuries ago had to be passed through long distances by way of messengers, taking months to get somewhere, can now be downloaded to a person's cell phone in a matter of seconds.   We are surrounded by information everyday that we have almost unimaginable access to.   And that only starts to be a bad thing when the quality of the information we receive descends, when propaganda replaces objective reporting and our minds give way to the strings controlled by the puppet masters of media.   As I watched Outfoxed, Robert Greenwall's attempt to expose Rupert Murdoch as one of these puppet masters and his media outlet Fox News as his set of strings, I noticed blatant examples of closed-mindedness and propaganda that are not advertised in Fox News' ironic slogan: “Fair and balanced.”
What is disturbing to me is Fox News’ claim of objectivity, of being “fair and balanced,” when a look at their schedule of programming on foxnews.com (Breaking) reveals that only nine hours per day are devoted to news casting.   The remaining majority of a typical day consists of editorial shows that are headed by conservative hosts.   So when viewers tune in to Fox to get news, they are more likely to be bombarded with one side of an issue.   And when a viewer happens to turn the television channel to Fox during the minority of the day, news is manipulated to shape opinions of those watching.   As seen in Outfoxed, correspondents are asked to refer to certain subjects in a...