by Thomas Purcell

Created on: November 18, 2010   Last Updated: November 19, 2010

In the last few years the political pendulum of right vs. left has been swinging farther and farther to each extreme. Groups like Move-on.org, and the religious right are becoming more the mainstream viewpoints of both the right and left wing politics in this country. But that isn't the driving force in political thought now in this country.

The media is.

The media- the newspapers, TV, Internet - is now the most central voice in politics. In fact, you could say the President Obama is the first US President elected by the media. His campaign was floundering when Oprah Winfrey came out and supported him and asked all her listeners/watchers to vote for him as well.

Television and cable companies no longer report the news, they comment on it. When I was a kid, the television news simply reported the facts. If a man held up the local dry cleaners then the story was 'a man held up the local dry cleaners'. Nowadays, this news story would be made into a special on the dangers of running a cash business, or how dry cleaners are somehow driving people into desperate action. And we the public, gobble it up with a spoon. No one questions the validity of anything they read or hear, they just say 'I saw it on the Daily Report', and that suffices for truth. It's entertainment folks, and to accept what is fed to us, whether it's from Fox, right wing radio, or left wing CNBC, it should be questioned.

Most of the media outlets today are controlled by a handful of people that you can count on one hand. This is not a good thing, since those outlets will almost undoubtedly take on the political character or the person running things. The owner of a newspaper doesn't have to actually tell them what stories to print, it just has to hire editors and reporters that have a political bent similar to their own. The result is that now news stations and newspapers around the country sacrifice their journalistic neutrality for the expedience of ratings and subscriptions. It's all about competitions and ratings now not journalistic truth. What are popular shows with high ratings? Not the McNeil/Lehrer report- no it's Nancy Grace crucifying a child molester publicly, or Jon Stewart goofing on the President. And we accept that as news, rather than what it is- entertainment.

There are precious few true news reporters out there anymore. Reading the paper, we all lament the loss of the true investigative reporter. Reporters now simply regurgitate an AP press release back onto the page as a story, without asking the real questions. They look for headlines, rather than the truth. No wonder subscriptions are down. I won't even get into the mass blogs of the Internet.

It's hard to say what will help this situation. Going back to the old rules of single owners per media outlet would be a start - the Feds years ago allowed media companies to buy up multiple outlets in a market starting us down this path. But it takes more than that.

It takes us to start looking for the truth instead of the headline. Question everything you read- and ask yourself, what is the real story here?

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