Well put, REAL news is just boring. Give the audience a reason to want to watch and they will. In the case of networks like MSNBC, Fox News, and all of the other blatantly obvious liberal and conservative outlets, the reason they give you for wanting to watch is the "the other side did/said what?!" factor. It's like getting two friends to fight by telling them that the other said something bad about their mother. The hyper-inflation of actual stories such as in the Reid-McConnell example does nothing but pins one side against the other.
There is no accountability in the press either. And I don't just mean them saying mean things, but just getting things wrong. If I was in charge of an outlet that ran the President's trip to India costing what it "did" story or the Shirley Sherrod "is a racist story" I'd fire whoever did the fact checking.
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Originally Posted by
SCSInet http:///forum/thread/387067/so-will-you-on-the-left-call-for-prosecution-for-inspiring-violence#post_3403125
You make a fantastic point. I will add that as consumers of this information, we do a very poor job of holding the media accountable for this sort of thing... in fact, you'd probably find that it boils down to the media feeding us what we want. The general public is less interested in facts than in sensationalistic news. Look at headlines today... if McConnell professionally and elegantly makes a statement disagreeing with something Reid said or did, the media headline reads "McConnell BLASTS Reid's plan for ... " or "McConnell SLAMS democrats blah blah..." everything everywhere is slanted to be as dramatic as possible, and headlines are often worded in such a way that is downright misleading for the sake of getting the article read. This happens across all media, not just the "liberal" or "conservative" media.
Let's face it, the news has a lot of competition. The evening news has to compete for viewers with American Idol and Jersey Shore, the online news has to compete with tmz.com and facebook. In the end, it's our fault for having an appetite for the dramatic and exciting rather than the facts.
This thread is only one example, but it's interesting to me how people point out a bias by bringing up someone something said, having not getting called to task about it. Conservatives point out something a liberal said, claiming "had one of our guys said that the media would have gone crazy!!!" The thing is that when a someone on their side says something, whether they get called to task on it or not, people on "their side" silently smile and scream "ooohhh burn" in their heads. While it may be very true that the bias exists, when someone of our own poltiical leaning throws a ball of mud, it's not like we don't enjoy watching it fly.
The polarization of our political climate is very unfortunate. The way things have become, it's almost a "you're either with us or against us" mentality. In truth, most Americans reach across the aisle for one belief or another. For example, I identify strongly as a conservative, yet I think that religion has absolutely no place in government. Too many conservative political circles would throw me to the curb for "betraying" that one aspect of conservative principles. Only when you look at both sides (especially the side you most disagree with) objectively can you truly obtain the truth.