The news media has the power to shape not only what people believe, but also the outcomes of our elections at all levels.\u00a0 As citizens grow up and become more in tune with what is going on politically, they begin to form opinions on pressing issues that contribute to their party identification.\u00a0 When this happens, they will tune in to a specific news network and will have a hard time watching or reading anything presented by anyone else.\u00a0 News networks feed into ideological biases by presenting information that will appeal to its viewers.\u00a0 If they don’t, they will lose viewers, lose money, and fail.\u00a0 News networks have to gain and maintain an audience to stay in business, so their only option is to give the people what they want to hear.\u00a0Described as infotainment, the media looks to entertain just as much as it looks to inform, and I think we can all agree that with Trump in office it is easy to find an entertainment value from either his supporters or doubters.\u00a0 If Fox were to present something criticizing Trump’s view on tax reform, it would lose viewers and lose money.\u00a0 Since Fox portrays Trump’s view on tax reform as appropriate, those who agree with his ideas on tax reform will watch Fox, grow more and more conservative, and learn to disagree more and more with liberal beliefs.\u00a0 It is hard to imagine what a non-biased report would even look like, but if there were one, would a viewer even be able to see it as neutral?<\/p>\n
There is no arguing that there are biased reports every day on all news media stations, but are our brains so wired to see something that may be factual, as actually biased in the opposing party’s favor?<\/p>\n
In a 2017 NBC News poll (typically liberal leaning), 78% of Fox News watchers supported Trump’s job in office while only 18% of MSNBC watchers supported it.\u00a0 In 2014, 63% of Americans believed the news media was either too liberal or too conservative, while only 34% thought it was “just about right.”\u00a0 Studies show that extreme Democrats and Republicans can read the exact same news accounts, but still believe the information presented is biased against their favored positions.\u00a0 So as networks gain the reputation for being politically biased, they determine the way their viewers perceive information given to them.\u00a0 And with Fox News being the most watched network if 2016, it is no surprise that Trump came out victorious in the election.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/trumps-address-to-congress\/choose-your-news-how-viewers-different-news-outlets-see-trump-n726241<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The news media has the power to shape not only what people believe, but also the outcomes of our elections at all levels.\u00a0 As citizens grow up and become more in tune with what is going on politically, they begin to form opinions on pressing issues that contribute to their …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3801,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40542,74107,68425],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1030am-section","category-ch-6-the-fourth-estate","category-spring-2018","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/introamgov-mcgowen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}