This is a three page exercise in creative writing that focuses on the topic of media literacy. The exercise is to write an email to a friend discussing the process of conducting journalistic inquiry on the political campaigns, using online sources.The email discusses the types of biases evident in the media, and how one must sift through the material in order to present socially conscious journalism.
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 called primary sources: official material authorized by President Obama including White House and other sources. 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 was true for the Huffington Post and the New York Times. I gathered as many articles as I could from a cross-section of America. I read everything and dissected it. I discovered that the key to eliminating researcher bias was to research more and more. I also wanted to interview people for my story, and so I called up some local campaign officials from both the Romney and the Obama campaigns. They were more than willing to talk to me, although their statements were obviously not neutral in tone. There was a lot of posturing and cheerleading going on. I tried to imagine what it would have been like as a reporter in the 19th century or before, when finding out information was not nearly as easy as it is now. The problem now is too much information. We have too many different sources, and many of them are saying the same thing but in different ways. It is up to reader, the researcher, to digest this information and think critically about its presentation and me. I also needed to think critically about the process with which I was researching, what topics I chose to cover, and the questions I chose to ask. Thinking critically also meant that I had to see how exactly I was processing and analyzing the information. What assumptions did I have? How were my beliefs impacting my reception of what I read? It was a difficult process. I enjoyed reading the comedy elements such as Colbert Report and Daily Show coverage because of their over-the-top and exaggerated sense of humor. Humor prevented me from getting too serious, overwhelmed, or bogged down.
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