Bill_Murray_Fan_7383 Posted:

Also, you guys are all focusing on the news, and only talking about news channels, forgetting that music, films, television, video games, etc., are all part of the mainstream media.

I think sometimes people will say “popular show x said situation Y so everyone thinks that’s how it happens 100% of the time” but the majority of talk about “media brainwashing” points at the news, since its purpose is to report facts.

Anyway, I brought this topic back up because I thought of something: how would you make the news better? To remove all spin and bias from a story, would you have a robot staff without opinions? To get every side of the story, would you read the mind of anyone and everyone who was involved, even if they were dead? To prepare opinions from each side of the argument, would you carefully pick the analysts so as to be evenly matched?

Obviously all of those are improvements that are impossible. There definitely are some things that can be reasonably done to improve a network. They could improve those damn news tickers better or eliminate them, because they just leave me asking for details (“Obama discusses Holder’s “racism” remark”? Really?) anyway. They could get rid of the celebrity news – people have E!, TMZ, and whatever other channels are dedicated to celebrity stuff. They could tone down the more ridiculous personalities, and at least throw in a disclaimer that what these people say is not to be taken as fact.

But my point is that the things people are asking of news networks are often impossible. Some people will always disagree with the way a given story is presented because it’s not what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not. I agree that bias runs rampant among some of the more shameless pundits in the industry and perhaps the suits know that they are good for ratings. But to expect perfection is to expect too much out of a world where everything – especially people – is fundamentally flawed.