Everyday people turn to their televisions to stay informed of global and national issues. We turn on our televisions to news channels and get updates on events occurring around the world. Over the past few decades a growing concern has surfaced regarding our media sources: bias. Wikipedia defines media bias as “bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered.”  Media bias is extremely detrimental to society because it does not allow the full details of any event to be known, it influences the opinions of the viewers, and it can ultimately lead to false prejudices and misunderstandings among the masses.

        When the term media bias is used, it must be understood to not refer to an individual reporter’s bias, but more on a larger scale to an entire source. We all see individual news reporters like Glenn Beck, an infamous conservative reporter who we know to have some level of bias. However on the larger scale it is a widely known fact in the United States of America that Fox News or CNN are more conservative in their reporting. Media bias is most often seen in times of political change or in regards to politics in general, but is also known to come in four different forms; advertising bias, corporate bias, mainstream bias and sensationalism.

                The most common form of bias that we are exposed to, and one that seems to have one of more lasting impacts, is sensationalism. Almost every day we are exposed to news stories revolving around a horrific novel accident like a plane crash or some radical terrorist activity somewhere in the world. Although these news stories usually hold a high level of truth to them, they are misleading in that they give the impression that these events happen on a regular basis. With the world population almost at 7 billion people, events like these should be expected to occur at some point, somewhere in the world. However, that isn’t to say that affect the majority of the population in any way whatsoever. And to bring these sensational news stories to light to the masses, the media creates a sense of foreboding that such an event could occur at any time to just about anyone. Furthermore, while reporting such news, most of the relevant, more local, news are usually avoided or just barely noted.

                This moves us into another popular form of media bias called mainstream bias. When one news source finds a piece of news deemed important, it is almost immediately picked up by another source to try and gain attention to their reporting of it. This is tied heavily to sensationalism as when a sensational news story is displayed; it tends to draw more attention from the people. In turn, if more people start to report it, they try and get more viewers to tune in to their source and add their own individual “flavor” to it. An example of this can be noted in the past years media coverage of the midterm elections of the Senate and the House. It was reported as a Republican win due to the fact that they won control of the House of Representatives. Conversely, although the Democrats won control of the Senate, hardly any coverage was provided for this detail. This reflects mainstream bias as it demonstrates an instance in which the mainstream conservative media tends to report more so for matters concerning the success of the Republican Party.

-          Go into specific examples regarding media bias for one-two paragraphs

-          Next paragraph will highlight quality of current media in the US and hopefully demonstrate just how bad it really is.  

-          Incorporate professional views on American media and the damage the bias has on the public

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more to come?