How media has changed

My Perspective

In a recent political television ad, there is an excerpt from a news item that was aired originally on cspan April 3, 1987 at a New Hampshire Campaign Event. In that video clip Joe Biden is heard to be telling a person at the rally that he suspected he had a higher IQ than that person and that he went to school on a full academic scholarship. He also said he ended up in the top of his class, he was the outstanding student in his political science class and he graduated with three degrees.

Also, in the ad it showed a clip from the September 22nd1987 news broadcast where news anchor for CBS News Jed Duvall reported that Joe Biden did not graduate at the top of his law school class, that he did not have three degrees and that he was not named outstanding political college student in college. On a September 20, 1987 news broadcast Sam Donaldson from ABC reported that Newsweek had reported that Biden had attended school on a half scholarship, he ended up at the bottom of his class and he had only earned one degree, not three. The report by Donaldson also said in his report that Biden admitted Newsweek was right and that his memory had failed him.

The issue I have with this ad is not that I was amazed that Joe Biden got called out on a lie that he told. Donald Trump has also been known to tell fibs and has been caught by the media. The revelation with this ad is that it shows how drastically the media has changed since 1987 when news anchors did an honest job of reporting the news without inserting their own bias. In todays news broadcast the fact that Joe Biden had been caught in a lie would likely not air on NBC, CBS, ABC, or CNN among others. Fox would probably have reported it accurately because it was a bad reflection on the character of Joe Biden.

The bias that is now seen in the media is the worst I have ever seen. Most major networks have agendas to attack the right. Fox has an agenda to keep a close eye on the left and can also be accused of bias in it’s reporting. There may be legitimate journalist on all networks, but it appears to me that the majority of the major news networks have been given an agenda to follow by the owners of the networks. In many cases some news anchors could be called political activist instead of journalist.

This bias did not just come about since Trump became president. It is worse now with the reporting about Trump, but the political bias was there even before Trump took over as president.

There is a new news source out there right now and that is News Nation Now. This broadcast is coming from the Nexstar Broadcast Group and they claim they will be reporting the news without bias and to be opinion free. The news broadcast is coming from the WGN studios in Chicago and can be seen on the WGN channel. They have their own news anchors for the broadcast and they are also using reporters from throughout the Nexstar group. It premiered on Tuesday September 1, 2020. So far it looks good and they are at this time not showing any obvious bias.

The media trust is at an all-time low. To get credibility back the media has to discontinue its bias. It is important for the future of our country that media gets back to doing its job and reporting accurate unbiased news. Hopefully News Nation Now will gain enough recognition that will force the other networks to take an introspective look at themselves. I am not confident this will happen, but at least News Nation gives me some hope that if they truly follow the agenda they have set out, that some credibility will come back to media in the future.