Our country’s biggest threat isn’t al-Qaida. Nor is it political gridlock, China or the outsourcing of our industrial base to the developing world. America’s biggest threat comes from within: Look no further than our media. Specifically, the 24-hour cable news channels — MSNBC, Fox News and CNN — but they certainly are not alone. All of the blame can’t simply be placed on the outlets; in capitalism, there is always a consumer along with the producer. And as long as we keep consuming, you can bet they will keep producing.
As Mark Twain put it, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. The lines between opinion and news have become so blurred, you can hardly differentiate between the two anymore. “The Sean Hannity Show” and “The O’Reilly Factor” have consistently received the highest ratings on Fox, as well as for “news” in general. On MSNBC, the most-watched programs are “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “The Rachel Maddow Show.” None of these four programs are nightly news — they are talk shows. And if you take the time to watch any of these programs, you’ll find that the ongoing narrative isn’t as much about their liberal or conservative ideologies, but about their respective parties being right.
Turn on MSNBC any time of day, and I can almost guarantee that someone, whether it’s Al Sharpton or Ed Schultz, will be praising President Barack Obama or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Turn on Fox News, and you’ll get just the opposite. The media’s job is to question our leaders and challenge them to be better. Our media is failing us. There are no fair evaluations anymore, it seems.
And the numbers don’t lie: A Fairleigh Dickinson University study from 2011 asked viewers of several media outlets basic right or wrong questions about current international events, such as, “Have the opposition groups protesting in Egypt been successful in bringing down the regime there?” Fox News viewers were the most misinformed, although viewers of MSNBC and CNN didn’t do much better. Those who watched Sunday morning programming scored significantly better, and NPR listeners did the best. Surprisingly, the runner-up to NPR was “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
When asked whether the Occupy Wall Street protesters were mostly Democrats or Republicans, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC fared the worst, in that order (the answer was Democrats). I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if you want to be among the most informed Americans, I would suggest tuning in to NPR to keep up with current events or watching a Sunday morning news program. If you want to hear the political party you identify with receive lavish praise, I would suggest sticking with Fox or MSNBC.
Another remarkable aspect of our media, and our political landscape as a whole, is how perfectly divided we are. Fox News is known as the only cable news provider with a right-wing bias. When you add the ratings of all those outlets with a left-wing bias, such as MSNBC, CNN, HLN and CNBC, you find their viewership is about the same as Fox’s.
Our politicians want us to be divided, as to keep us distracted from many of the real issues, like our government’s dark secrets. For example, I don’t think most Americans would condone Verizon, Sprint and AT&T donating massive amounts of money to politicians in return for legislation granting legal immunity regarding the National Security Agency and government surveillance. But apparently this is something Democrats and Republicans can reach a bipartisan agreement on, while we keep having the same debates about gun control.
Though politicians receive more power from enabling such a division, the media is there to profit from it. My advice? Stop buying into their game. Seek better media sources, and question everything you are told. Recognize that many of the decisions on Capitol Hill are made so congressmen can keep their lifelong jobs, not for the benefit of you or me. It’s not unheard of for politicians to retain their House seat until they are elderly and in a wheelchair. We should work to change what we agree on while continuing to have respectful discourse on what we disagree on. I truly believe there is good in almost all men and women. What brings us together as Americans, and as human beings, will always be more important than what tears us apart. But the old cliché holds true: United we stand, divided we fall. It seems we’ve been leaning toward the latter lately.