I always knew that most modern-day journalism is unethical just by seeing the headlines of most news. Sometimes I play a game with myself where I go to a very well-known biased news article and try to guess what line the bias starts. Especially with most republican news sources (like Fox News), it’s really easy to call out the very obvious bias. However, news outlets already being biased is unethical, though it has gotten worse in recent years.
Pelosi ignores Trump in leadership farewell speech, mentioning Bush, Obama, Biden
As I’m writing this, I decided to play my game and find the most ridiculous article title. And I will say, I succeeded in record time. It only took me 45 seconds to locate the article above, with it being titled Pelosi ignores Trump in leadership farewell speech, mentioning Bush, Obama, Biden. Do not worry, I will spare you the read, but basically Fox News was criticizing Nancy Pelosi for not mentioning former president Donald Trump in her congress farewell speech. This article is shorter than most text messages I send and says a whole lot of nothing. Like seriously, who cares that Nancy Pelosi did not mention Trumps name? Genuinely why is this considered news!? I am not too sure why I am so surprised right now since I already know that this is what modern day news sources report on. It is like a political chess game, where the media plays the role of the king while the government is the queen. The media is such an important piece within this game since it is used to protect and favor the politicians. Though, once the media (the king) falls it makes the politicians vulnerable. This analogy that I just made up really, I think, resonates with modern day journalism and politics. Not just because of the co-dependency between the two, but the overall feeling that both politics and journalism is just a silly, stupid game. However, the scary part about this is that a lot of Americans do not consider this a silly game. They blindly listen to journalists and seriously believe it. People will hear one thing in the news and run with it, without fact checking it.
BUT I CAN’T BLAME THEM!
For the longest time, I always blamed the viewers for being (excuse my French) fucking stupid. Especially with the touching subject of politics, it always baffled me that people did not triple check their sources. Though, why do we have to go to the extent of fact checking our sources? Why must the media not give us the right answers without spinning the story into something completely wrong? HOW COME IT IS LEGAL FOR THE NEWS TO LIE TO US? Finding that out really struck a nerve, as I hope it did everyone else. I am extremely glad we watched The Newsroom in class, because it really opened my eyes more than they already were to how much modern-day news is just so unethical. Also the subject of pop-culture media being unethical made me snap my fingers! I always thought that the idea of glorifying celebrities in either a positive or negative way is extremely harmful. Celebrity news being unethical I feel is so overlooked since we use it for entertainment, rather than actual news. The hypocrisy is alarming when people criticize political journalism, but not the pop-culture side. And I am aware that these subject matters are at opposite ends of the spectrum, but journalism uses the same methods to slam and lie about politicians and celebrities.
What are your thoughts?
Mass Media & American Life 
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