News is Crazy

I am not at all surprised by what was presented in this article. Many of the smartest people I know have a political viewpoint, and even if you are a "smart person" you're still going to want to hear that what you think is right. Sometimes even more so, I think. These networks and publications have a massive viewing audience, theres no way it is just limited to "narrow-minded, politically obsessed characters who send mass e-mails from their mother’s basement." 

I have spoken quite a few times about how much I despise the overbearing political tilt of some networks. When I talk about this I am mostly referring to 24-hour news networks like Fox news and those painful radio shows. I understand that essentially every newspaper has a bias, though. I think in that case, its more effective for the viewer to deal with it and take the news with a minute grain of salt, rather than disregarding newspapers all together. A matter of a few words can shift the bias of an article, and finding completely neutral words to describe every situation is not very realistic, especially considering time constraints. 

What this article mostly reminded me of was my dad. He certainly leans to the right, and thats tough in a liberal city like Madison. There is a liberal talk radio show in madison that actually is fairly popular, due to its location. Sometimes my dad puts it on, just for kicks. He, in that regard, goes against everything this article mentions. I think he likes to listen to the other side just so he can hate it more and have more ammunition against it, by hearing their quite frankly, outrageous arguments at times. I consider myself fairly neutral, and this station has the power to irk me just as much as Rush Limbaugh could. 

In the end, there is an equal amount of bias on either side. While it is nice that one side isn't worse than the other, that mean one side is never better, and that is what leaves us with the situation that we have so often been encountering: nothing is getting done. Sometimes people need to be right and sometimes they need to be wrong for there to be progress, but since both sides have enough mediums and supporters to pump themselves up, that is rarely seen.