Journalism Friend

Journalism is a lot tougher than I thought it would be! What I initially believed to be simple "who, what, where, when, why, and how" has turned out to have a huge political dimension that I was not expecting. Even the questions I ask become politically charged, and I am at risk for revealing my bias as soon as I open my mouth (or my computer). Save for a few Associated Press reports, everything seems biased to me now that I've become more media literate. The obvious comedy news sites like the Colbert Report/Colbert Nation and the Daily Show are great diversions for me, and they satirize the mainstream media in ways that I appreciate now more than ever. I hope you get a chance to check those out.

Hey! Have you ever visited FoxNews.com? They advertise themselves as being "fair and balanced," but I'm starting to wonder…they're about as fair and balanced as the Huffington Post! Both of those websites have a ton of information but everything is wound up and spun in one direction or another. It's not only confusing; I find it misleading as well. Sometimes the images they show are also misleading, causing the reader to feel a certain way about an issue. I've noticed the ways editors use imagery and words to manipulate the minds of their readers. It bothered me a lot at first, but now I just find it comical.

My research into the political campaign of Barack Obama began with what could be...

Yet even this material is obviously biased because of the stake that the incumbent has in the election. Is it even possible to get unbiased information about the campaign? I wanted to know what kinds of strategies were being used by the Obama campaign to ensure success. What kind of demographic research do they do, and how do they do outreach? To what extent is the media complicit in supporting the President in his campaign for re-election, and to what extent are specific sources of media overtly biased? On the contrary, what sources could I rely on for information that was objective? Was it possible to be truly objective? I do not think so, because every editor and every author has a bias.
The media manipulates consumers at every turn. I wanted to present a socially responsible report, but was become afraid that I too would reveal my biases in the research and the reporting. During the research stage, I had to remind myself to probe deeper into opinions and points-of-view that were not my own instead of immediately writing off those ideas because I disagree with them. Thus, when I visited Fox News, I had to overcome my aversion to their conservative slant. It was not as hard as I thought, because there is some substantial coverage on the Website that I could use for compiling information for my story.

The same…