I was recently arguing about politics with a rather liberal friend of mine when it occurred to me to ask, out of pure curiosity and slight intrigue, where exactly it was that she was getting her sources. Now, my friend is a very intelligent person, but as she opened her mouth in response my hypothesis was quickly proven true. Her list of news sources was what I would expect of any American: CNN, CBS, and the well-respected New York Times. I assume any well-rounded conservative can predict where this is headed, as all of the sources she listed were of strong liberal bias.
The part that bothered me, however, was not that her main sources of media were so left-sided, but that these sources are what are being used to educate the youth of America. It is a rare occurrence to find an educational system that does not slant both news and its teaching in some way. From a young age, children are bred into a liberal-controlled world. The largest news corporations in the United States report from drastically biased angles, claiming that they are reporting the only true side, while news outlets such as Fox are belittled and subjected to being called outrageous media metropolises meant for crazy right-wingers. By the time young Americans reach university, the majority are so heavily engaged by the leftist media that they do not even exercise their ability to contemplate political alternatives.
It is not often that viewers pause to analyze why such bigoted opinions come to be. It never seems to occur to the liberal public that the reason conservative media faces such an uphill challenge is because the media is controlled by the opposite side. If the majority of higher-ups that control the television and Internet news sources that we use on a daily basis are so prevalently liberal, it is inevitable that the result we are left with is media so biased that not even Dan Rather can deny it.
It is no wonder why this bias carries into adulthood; it is the only media that many of us have been exposed to. I can guarantee that every person on a college campus has at least one friend who is a closet conservative, mainly because claiming a rightist view is so heavily ostracized. Bernard Goldberg recently wrote a compelling book entitled Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, in which he takes a hard look into what really controls the media in this country. I encourage everyone to give this book the read it deserves.
And if not, next time you watch the news, really analyze what you are being told, and keep in mind that everyone reports with an angle.
Editor’s Note: Columns granted by the Editorial Board to the three political groups on campus—the College Republicans, College Libertarians, and Progressive Student Alliance—rotate weekly in the opinion section of The Polytechnic.
