Oddly enough, to many parents around the world today, CNN is the paramount source of entertainment during prime hours. And while they get away with their kids trying to reach out for the remote with the “I am watching the news” card, all they really are is addicted. That’s the cold hard reality of the media today. As we edge towards 2019, media outlets have evidently been increasing investment on making their overall news experience’ as addictive as possible. Sadly, this is not limited to merely altering their color code or background theme to incline viewers but as it appears, to even alter news stories entirely to feed the sentiments of their general populace just so they keep coming back for more. Thus feeding the viewers news with excessively fabricated emotion is what has led news agencies like FOX News to amassing a projected revenue of 2.3 billion USD in 2016 alone compared to more modest 568 million USD of a less dramatic Associated Press. This demonstrates over how overselling the primary business module of many news agencies today.
To develop a firm grip over their viewers, several global media outlets have over the course of time established their support over a political wing. The support may not be blatantly announced but can be subtly picked up over how each agency shapes a news story in accordance to what they want their viewers to believe. On a global spectrum, we can observe how various agencies notably Vox, Buzzfeed, CNN, MSNBC among many have all leaned towards the Left and corresponds to the increasing leftist sentiments of the millennial today. By making news stories about leftist propaganda and consistently spreading hate over all things Donald Trump, they have been able to establish a strong ‘fan base’, fairly ironic for ‘news agencies’. The rightist news agencies on the other hand, including FOX who has become a pioneer of this political wing in the media, support conservative rightist ideas to a far extent in order to retain their viewers who generally are conservatives. For comparison, other such news agencies in the US include RedState, Redaltert, The Blaze who all exhibit one trait in common - their ‘red’ theme, correlating directly to the Republican party and consequently their support of the right wing. It is unfortunate that in our world today the term ‘politically neutral news’ even exists, for all news agencies that fall under the moral compass of reporting should be neutral. However, today globally this applies only to agencies like the AP, Reuters, BBC, US Today and few others.
Unfounded assumptions to support liberal views are a major part of leftist bias. This has become largely evident in today’s era of Donald Trump’s US presidency. However, another example from Dr Steven F. Allen states claimed that infant mortality is increasing in the United States; in fact, it has not increased since at least 1960 but has declined an average 2.5 percent a year since 1980. Stunts like this are still commonly pulled to rhetorically influence the sentiments of viewers in order to captivate them. Similarly, omission of stories that support the opposing political wing and ignoring facts to disprove claims of the opposition have all become common practice.
With this, the only main motive of such news agencies is to garner viewers in order to garner revenue. Thus many media outlets today have no longer remained a source of news that present facts and allow the reader to choose what’s right and what’s wrong regardless of the political wing. They instead have been focusing more on provoking emotions into their viewers to remain appealing. Amidst all this, for the readers, it has become really difficult to differentiate what is true and what is not.
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