Monday, April 18, 2016

Differences in Ideologies in the Media

Below, I've posted a couple of sites that illustrate the political ideology of the major news sources in the United States. There were a few points I found interesting. First, liberals are much more trusting of news sources than conservatives Second, it seems like there are more left-leaning news sources than right-leaning. I think understanding the ideological differences is an important issue because there have been so many complaints about media from both sides of the spectrum about the media. Do you think that these differences result in misleading news? Do you think the news sources are remaining neutral in their reporting?

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-your-preferred-news-outlet-says-about-your-political-ideology-2014-10

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/21/lets-rank-the-media-from-liberal-to-conservative-based-on-their-audiences/

http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/section-1-media-sources-distinct-favorites-emerge-on-the-left-and-right/

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/10/191709-nonpartisan-chart-reveals-whos-trusting-major-news-sources-liberals-conservatives/

3 comments:

  1. Definitely, it is hard to say that the news sources are perfectly neutral. There are some defects. The differences of perspectives might result in misleading news. However, it is okay to include their opinions, only if the news media provides facts and distinguishes between facts and their opinions. Unfortunately, the majority of news medias did not do good job on this. There are lots of improvement needed to be made.

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  2. This just reminded me of an article about CNN's biased report on democratic presidential debate. It's quite different from the topic above, but it could somewhat relate to media bias. The supporters of Bernie claimed that CNN censored them and published several articles about Clinton being the winner when clearly the poll indicated Bernie as winner. Apparently, CNN is owned by Time Warner Inc. which is Clinton's 7th biggest financial supporter. Since Clinton is a one of big donors to Time Warner, I feel like the relationship between Clinton and Time Warner could be one of reasons why CNN was biased towards Clinton. Who knows? It could be true or false.

    http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/15/bernie-backers-declare-war-on-cnn-for-naming-hillary-debate-winner/

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    Replies
    1. I understand that these actions by CNN could seem like bias, but there is a pretty good reason to dismiss that poll. It is done on Facebook which is where Bernie Sanders' target demographic lives. He leads her in Facebook likes by a very wide margin despite trailing in nearly every national poll so far. This is true even state by state. For instance he has more Facebook likes in South Carolina than Hillary does, despite losing by nearly 50 points there. Essentially, I don't think that ignoring that poll (or really any poll which is a voluntary internet poll) shows a bias on CNN's part.

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