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Media Bias In The Media

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Throughout America’s infantile years, the media solely consisted of the printing press, but as a result of industrialization, commercialization, and professionalization, it now extends into the world of technology, reaching far more Americans than ever before. Media can be defined as collective outlets for mass communication. In today’s society, massive amounts of media are consumed in a plethora of forms: newspapers, magazines, television, Internet, and social media. The 2007 U.S. Census Bureau 's Statistical Abstract of the United States reports that adults and teens spend nearly five months out the year watching television, surfing the Internet, reading daily newspapers and listening to music (cited in ABC News, 2006). In correspondence …show more content…

On the contrary, my mother, a liberal, denounces Fox News, relying on CNN, ABC, and MSNBC for her news. Their opposing political beliefs reinforce the dichotomy within media with conservatives on the right and liberals on the left, both remaining loyal to their respective news outlets. This is far more common than my interviewee’s anecdotal story; it extends across the entire nation. The Pew Research Center fortifies this claim by analyzing the relationship between political beliefs and preferred media sources. In doing so, they discovered that Fox News serves as the primary news outlet for 47 percent of conservatives, while CNN, NPR, and MSNBC are preferred by liberals (Mitchell, Gottfried, Kiley, & Matsa, 2014). By narrowing in on a specific ideology, news networks earn the trust of their audience and retain their attention. The Pew Research study corresponds with the results from my interviews, showing that 88 percent of conservatives trust Fox News, like my father, and 52 percent of liberals trust MSNBC, like my mother (Mitchell et al., 2014). The growing trust within partisan outlets simultaneously corresponds with the major spike in viewership these businesses experienced. According to The Wall Street Journal, Fox News came in first in prime time television rating in 2016 with an average audience of 3.1 million, which was a 72 percent increase from the previous year

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