Media Article

 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/books/review/31POSNER.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

This article specifically criticizes television news media. The one main point made in this article is that news media has become politically one-sided. Personally, I believe this to be true, because if you look at news stations such as Fox News, it is obvious where they stand on the political spectrum. Secondly, this article brings up the fact that the media today has become more prone to scandals and less accurate. I think that this article does a great job in not only explaining the differences in the media today compared to previous times, but in asking the questions like "why are these trends happening?" The answer given in the article explains that households today are able to have more access to more channels for less money, and that there are less restrictions on what can go on television. Whereas a hundred years ago there may have been two newspapers in a city, today there are dozens of television stations dedicated to "news." Competition is not as fierce because these stations can reach millions of people with little effort. The city with two newspapers would tend to have one for liberal audiences, and the other for conservative. However, large number of people who fall in the middle must be reached as well. Because of this, neither paper would be too liberal nor too conservative. Cable news stations don't have as much of a problem with this. If someone doesn't fall into a liberal or conservative category, they can find another news station that seems more neutral, which, in turn, puts less pressure on the reporters to get accurate information.

I think that this critique makes several strong points concerning the problems with the news media today. People today are focused too much on whether they fall under the liberal or conservative side, instead of focusing on the facts of the story. Political "sides" influence not only what goes into a story, but how the story itself is portrayed. As we talked about on Monday, all someone has to do is watch a news story on CNN and then switch to FOX to see how different the same story will be. With that said, it is up to the "consumer" to look at a variety of news sources to get the "facts" about any particular story minus the political polarizations.

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