Are we really in such bad shape? Is America on an unsustainable path from which we can’t recover? So much media attention is given to the bad things that happen on a daily basis that it is hard not to think our days are numbered and America is no longer the greatest nation.
News nowadays highlights the down-and-out, those falling from grace, and rarely highlights the positives that occur daily. We recognize certain papers as liberal and certain as conservative. All one has to do is watch the Sunday morning talk show circuit to realize that politicians in many cases pay more attention to the polls in periodicals than his or her constituents back home or knowledge of our country. From the first day periodicals and newspapers played a role in informing the public influencing elections and making or breaking political careers.
The news media continues to serve several roles. This first of which and possibly the most important is that a news source should convey information to a large number of people quickly. The idea is that it does this in an unbiased way. However, most news sources no longer even try to hide the fact that they have backers and must provide what those backers want for the audience to receive.
The problem with this is that as we evolve we forget that we are only getting a perspective and it is incumbent on us to take with a grain of salt what is read. We are supposed to be scrutinizing these half-truths and seeking truth. News media can serve to be a voice for a certain side of an argument or philosophy. But just because we read it and the source is well known does not make it true or the source credible. For example, anyone who calls Fox News “Fair and Balanced” has some serious problems with perceiving reality. Much in the same way, one can’t get more liberal than MSNBC.
Early on, news media could be used or bought as a tool to push the agenda for a certain political persuasion. There was a reason that our founders involved the press so heavily. They saw it as advantageous to themselves and to the public. Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Aurora served to malign the Federalist Adam’s administration with little more than stretches of facts. However, his writing got attention. And James T. Calendar it was long believed was on the payroll, unofficially, of Thomas Jefferson. However, when a high office that Calendar assumed he would get for his writing about Adam’s the monarchist during his campaign against Jefferson never came, Calendar turned on Jefferson but not before being locked up under the Alien and Sedition Act.
Of course the act was short lived. Now when a lawmaker or executive is trying to gain public support for an issue one of the first thing he or she does is to find editors sympathetic to the issue and let the penning begin. On the opposition side the penning also begins. Regardless of what the issue is there will be opposing views to fill their role criticizing the administration or lawmaker.
So my point is that perhaps we are not in as bad a shape as the media has presented by reporting solely on the bad and dysfu
