Critical Response Blog #7 10-23-07

For this week, I decided to write about the bias and objectivity in the news. Its hard these days to find any news broadcast or article that tells it the story from both sides, that just presents the facts. It can be seen with coverage of the war, coverage of the presidential election, or coverage of the entertainment world. It seems that the news reporters or journalists have the final say on who is portrayed as a hero or the enemy, who is the favorite, or who is a train wreck and who is a success story. As viewers, we may feel informed after watching the evening news, but in reality we are only hearing one side of the story.
For the past couple of the years, it seems that you can't turn on the TV or read the newspaper without hearing some mention of the war in Iraq. We are either being told the death count for the day, or that there are discussions being held to pull the troops out. However, its been so long since we first invaded, that I'm not sure if the majority of Americans still know why we are over there. We removed Saddam from the picture and most people thought that was the only reason we were over there, so the question remains why are we still there? And I don't know if we will ever get a straight forward answer. The media always gives the answer that will please the majority of the audience and keep them content. We will never hear the other side of the story watching our news programs because they won't show America in as good of a light as our news does. Its all about making sure that no matter what the real reason is, the American soldiers are the heroes and they are doing what is right. Being that we live in America and they are our soldiers, it is almost impossible to avoid bias when reporting about it, but it sometimes seem that the bias leaks over into bias about the Iraqi people. It goes from just the US being portrayed as the good guys to the US being portrayed as the good guys and all the Iraqi people are the bad guys. Bias is expected when discussing national matters, but there is a line between being bias and being degrading to other people and some news broadcasts cross that line.

To me, it also seems that the media defines what is trendy and popular in our culture today. Radio stations only play certain songs by popular artists and celebrities are only photographed in the clothes that are "cool". The media basically makes a statement that if you don't listen to this music or dress that way, you aren't cool. I take offense to this because I don't dress the way celebrities do because its not my style and it doesn't fit my personality and I think my music choices are just fine even if they aren't mainstream. My favorite band, Breaking Benjamin, isn't the most popular rock band out there, they are moderately popular. If you like rock music as a genre, then you have probably heard of them, but if you only listen to mainstream radio, you have no idea who they are. But because they aren't mainstream, they aren't played on the radio very often, they aren't performing at awards shows, and they get to do very many TV appearances, which limits their exposure to the masses. I honestly don't think the media should have as big of a say in popular culture as they do. People should make choices for themselves, instead of doing something because E! news said it would make them cool.