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How the media uses scare tactics to portray potentially negative news

Over the course of 16 years, only recently have I taken an interest in the news. Why is it though that there is no unbiased news network on TV anymore? You have the leftist channels like CNN trying to scare the pants off of it's viewers and the right wing channels telling you how bad the leftist channels are for doing that.

It seems to me that in modern times the news is based on what will attract the most attention. Who needs to hear about our advances in science and technology when the news believes global warming will kill us all? Did you know that 95% of all pollutants we put in the atmosphere are water vapor? The media fails to mention this though, and never forgets to leave water out of any graphs they may show you because if they mentioned that fact, global warming won't scare you as much. They also never forget to remind us of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, and how a nuclear missile could reach California, when talking about the latest standoff with the Korea's. My absolute favorite media hype was the NSA wire tapping "scandal" under the current Bush administration. The media went around saying that the government was wire tapping everyones phones, but failed to mention "the NSA is authorized by executive order to monitor phone calls and other communication originating from parties outside the U.S. with known or suspected links to al Qaeda, even if the terminus of that communication lies within the U.S." For anyone who doesn't understand what that means, translated to simple English it means that only phone calls coming from foreign countries who are believed to be related to Al Qaida can be tapped. The average citizen doesn't care enough to get the real facts though, and blindly believes what they read in the first paragraph of a news article, or the first 15 seconds of a news broadcast. This is why the media can continue to get away with it's scare tactics and falsely presented information.

Fact is, Global warming is not a legitimate threat, nor is Kim Jung Il dumb enough to use nuclear weapons on the United States. The media scares the public by giving out parts of the facts (the parts that will scare people). I smiled the biggest smile when Rudy Guiliani told the media to start reporting the real facts during one of this year's Republican debates. The man was completely right because it's just tiresome now that I have to search around to get the REAL news as opposed to the news CNN and Fox want me to hear. It's tiresome that I have to look arond for real news articles that aren't meant to scare me. This is my plea to the media. Please start reporting ALL the facts. Start getting both sides of a story (such as global warming) instead of presenting the side that will scare people.

Learn more about this author, Chris Handy.
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