Thursday, October 29, 2009
Freedom of Press?
In a Sun Times article we were given in class yesterday, to give us some backstory on the first amendment and certain rights. And in this article it defined freedom of the press as, " access to information independent of the government, and political leaders." While this is techinacally true, by definition, many news sources are accused of being highly supportive or against a certain political view. For example Fox is accused of being highly conservative, wheras the Chicago Tribune, the NY Times, and MSNBC are called out as being overly liberal, and CNN of supporting the Republican Party. Some people even claim that mock news sources like Stephen Coldbert and John Stewart are biased in what they show and who they make fun of. Which begs the question, are we ever going to see a newspaper or network that gives us the facts, and nothing else, free of any prejudice or bias?
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Nope, we're not. First of all, any such news source would go against basic human tendency. In fact, I don't even think it's possible for facts to be presented completely objectively within the form of an article, because when you think about it, the opinion of the author is embodied in the choices of what evidence to include as well as the interpretations of that evidence. Besides -- most people want the interpreting to be done for them, unfortunately. Hardly anybody wants to take the time to sift through the evidence and draw their own conclusions. Ahh, yes, the modern and thoroughly lazy American culture. How beautiful it is.
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