Honesty and Fairness in the USA, Part 1

A few days ago, an article in the New York Times entitled Nation’s Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows by Jim Rutenberg and Megan Tree-Brenan (New York Times; April 21, 2011) described the mood in the United States as negative and unenthusiastic. When other newspapers, like the Washington Post, conducted similar polls, and their data turned-out to be similar to those reported in the New York Times ― All reported that the mood in the United States was very low, most American were dissatisfied with both parties and the president; and Americans believed that the country was moving in the wrong direction ― these polls became the central topic for the major news television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN . . .).

These news networks appeared to be attempting to find the answers to the two central questions concerning the polls: First, why are American so discouraged and pessimistic about our government ― especially at this time when it seems like economic and social conditions are improving? And second, how will Americans’ level of discouragement and pessimism affect the next election ― particularly the presidential race?

I watched several of these news cast, including the ones on Easter Sunday, like Meet the Press, hosted by David Gregory. I found all of them to be uninformative but very predictable (Meet the Press was slightly better than the others, but not by much.) In many ways they were a microcosm of the cause of the problem: Television networks discussions of issues are always partisan politics. Their hosts and guests are never objective reporters; instead, they’re paid to represent specific interest groups that have tremendous influences in the republican and democratic parties. As a result, what we hear from these reporters, on the network shows, are the same types of spin (in many cases they are verbatim) that we hear from our elected officials in Washington. As a result, by the end of the discussion, the only thing that is certain is that all the reporters stated what their parties and interest groups told them to say, but none of them answered the questions that concerned us.

I will attempt to answer these questions in tomorrow’s blog ― Honesty and Fairness in the USA, Part 2.

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