Why the lies in the news media?

The news media is very opinionated. A majority of citizens of our country switch to fox news, CNN, NBC, or BBC, when they're watching TV. These viewers are finding televised news more accessible than reading a news paper. The news media on television is more opinionated than the newspaper. Those that watch TV just don't understand that to get the full story they have to read about it first. In order to understand the news, they have to read about it and know about it, before they watch the TV analyze it. However, my guess is more of these viewers want to watch the TV because they refuse to analyze a newspaper article since they think it's boring. That, and it's more entertaining to a few people, to pay attention to the newscasters, than the actual news itself. It's just lame what they're doing. We'll never gain respect in this world at this pace.

if you think that newspapers arent just as biased as television stations then i think you need to open your eyes. all "media" are trying to push an agenda, one way or another. the best thing you can do is view ALL media sources, and come to your own conclusion.

dont fall for their little catch phrases either.

The only source of information that is not yet controlled is the internet. Any other news source is controlled by government or big business, so is not necessarily the truth.

reply to post by annestacey


I believe that even here corporations and perhaps various governments have influence. Too much disinformation is allowed to thrive here for me to think otherwise. The influence is much more subtle than it is in traditional media outlets, but I think it is still there.

Oh, I almost forgot about this thread. I wasn't saying that the information from newspapers wasn't as biased as the ones on television. I meant to say that more people watch the TV and they would rather do that than read a newspaper. However, there clearly is more restrictions on what goes on in TV shows with regards to the news than the TV shows. The better thing about nwespapers, is that there are a lot of them, whereas there are only few stations competing for viewers. So, there are more viewpoints that are readily available to people that like to read certain newspapers.

Every form of media can come out biased; TV, internet, newspaper, they are all doing the same thing. Gather as much information as you can on a story and write it up. Then that story has to go through an editor or news director so that anything that could legally damage the medium is taken out or softened to prevent lawsuits and sources for inflammatory stories can be checked. Plus you're on a deadline so often times you really don't get a whole lot of time to dig. Now with so much advertising driving media, there are more and more stories that could be taken out due to loss of revenue in ad dollars and not just lawsuits.

There are differences of course in the audience that each form of media can reach, I'm willing to bet that the older generations prefer print media and the younger generations prefer the net while TV has a hold on both groups. I could be off base on that assumption, but that's my guess anyway. I'll agree with the op in the belief that most people stateside tend to rely on TV as the major source of credible news even though it may not be as reliable as they think.

The root of the problem today in my opinion is a serious loss of credibility and investigative reporting. Credibility is everything in journalism, I've worked with some great journalists and some really lazy ones. The good ones take the time to get the full story and check their bias at the door. The lazy ones... well, they don't always report the full and accurate story. There seem to be way more of the lazy ones out there now and many of the people at the top are making sure that nobody makes too many waves. The lazy ones are fine with that since they don't want to dig too deep anyway and the real investigative types tend to be the ones that are shown the door or hit on something that they cannot report and start to become biased themselves. Then you have to deal with the competition factor, nobody wants to get scooped. That's why you end up with everybody clamoring to report something and screwing up the details. Kinda like election night, 2000 was a banner year. Everybody kept calling the election prematurely cause they all wanted to be first.

I think the internet is great, it allows people to get their stories out without editors standing in the way as much, but then the reader has to take it upon themselves to check the sources and not believe everything that you read since a lot of internet news sites can be based on opinion or agenda just like the big dogs.

As far as volume of news sources, it's a toss up these days, with local tv stations and newspapers going digital I can find information from around the globe at my fingertips. But volume doesn't mean anything. Just because there may be 10 newspapers in my town and 4 tv stations doesn't mean that the newspapers are better at reporting, in fact the smaller ones are generally more pointed in their stance. You need to find the sources that you can trust, the individuals who are really out there doing their jobs. Even then, every other person at that media group could be the worst journalist ever.

You always have to ask what is really going on here? No one will ever report a story that could cause massive fallout from important people unless everyone else does to. If you could tip the scale toward reporting everything (that is true with proof of course) no matter what kind of trouble it might land you in, then you would have a return to good journalism. I don't see that happening any time soon when reporters get banned from the white house for asking real questions. Real journalists are a dying breed but they are still out there.

Keep reading and watching, the truth IS out there... it's just getting harder to find.