The media has turned from a once credible source of information to a biased projection of thoughts. Cable news has become outlets for opinion and entertainment then actual journalism. The higher ups wonder why people are turning away from the media. I do not.
It’s fair to say that we do have balance – but it’s not balance in the right way. You have Fox News who tends to lean to the right with conservatives while CNN and MSNBC are more liberal and lean toward the left. So where is the real balance?
What’s going on?
We sometimes hear stories like what happened earlier this week at Fox. Fox News mistakenly aired the wrong tape for the Palin book signing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This comes after an earlier incident this week, where Sean Hannity showed footage from a conservative rally held over the summer [that] was played on “Hannity” during a segment on a more recent rally.1 So the question is now, is Fox News intentionally misleading the public?
Fox has stated that there has been a “production error.” They also released this statement:
“Yesterday we told you about Sarah Palin kicking off her book tour and then we spoke to Sean Hannity about an interview that he did with former Governor Palin. When introducing the segment we showed you footage of people lining up in Michigan for a book signing that evening. In the tease before the segment, the tease to commercial, we told you how those people were already lining up to meet Palin. The problem is we didn’t show you the video we were actually referencing. Instead we mistakenly aired what’s called “file tape” of Sarah Palin. We didn’t mean to mislead anybody in that tease. It was a mistake, and for that we apologize.”2
Fox News hasn’t been the only cable news company to be caught altering “news.” According to Yahoo news, Fox News rival MSNBC caught heat last week for using altered images of Sarah Palin on the air, for which they later apologized.3
How should we react?
As the public how should we respond to this? Can we believe that these are accidents and acts of “production errors?” As a journalist student how should I react to hearing about this? What are your thoughts on this?
