Archive for October 30th, 2008
Media Bias – The Death of Journalism
About I week ago I traveled to Orlando for a conference.
The hotel I stayed in only carried a couple of cable news networks which included CNN and Headline News, which is a CNN subsidiary originally named CNN2.
I regularly only get news from MSNBC and Fox News and having heard what both of what the right and the left call extreme, I make my own opinions.
The little time I spent at the Hotel (about five days), I was amazed at the media bias showed by CNN towards Barack Obama. Any attack launched by the Obama campaign was affirmed without scrutiny and any attack from the McCain campaign was always, without exception dissected and countered by a response from the Obama campaign. The anchors who had partisan commentators from both sides, even corrected democratic strategist when their point wasn’t too effective supporting the democratic candidate Barack Obama.
The most fragrant journalistic behavior from an anchor on CNN came from Anderson Cooper, who clearly supported Barack Obama’s agenda on all discussions held by the democratic and republican commentators, and moderated by him. The bias was amazingly evident.
I have been wrong many times and specially if I see that my objectivity might be clouded, I am driven towards research proving me wrong. I kept watching CNN which attempted very hard to remain unbiased as opposed to MSNBC or Headline News, even going as far as turning down a multi-million dollar Obama 30 min infomercial which ran on seven networks including NBC, CBS, MSNBC and FOX. Not having access to other channels, I can’t really talk about what the after-effects of the infomercial were, but CNN replayed clips from the 30 min for much longer than the 30 minutes, all with positive reviews.
I twitted recently that the only real act on CNN was Lou Dobbs and right after hearing him ask for viewers vote on a poll on the CNN website on media bias, I voted and got a snap-shot on the results which I post below.
I am glad to see its not just me, thinking that the national media has abandoned its objectivity in the coverage of the presidential campaign. Polls are so all over the map, leading me to firmly believe that they can not be trusted.
