On political bias in the media

by Travis Irvine

I’ve often thought of modern democracy as a stool. No, not that kind of stool – a stool you sit on while getting trashed at a bar. Stools usually stand on three legs – just as democracy stands on three delicious, low-fat branches of government. But what if you add a fourth leg? Well, that stool would be far sturdier, my friend, and could hold up your drunken tookus all night! Maybe for days! Woo! I heart drinkin’!

Likewise, I’ve always considered media as our democracy’s fourth delicious branch. Media can keep checks and balances over all the branches and there’s no limit as to how large it can get. It could potentially create the biggest, fattest, most beautiful stool the world has ever seen!

But lately this leg has been cut shorter than the rest, and our democracy is all kinds of wobbly bobbly. If you tried to sit on our democracy at a bar, you’d fall and look silly in front of all your friends. Mainstream media in America are missing their mark, though they’re certainly not missing their audience. In 2005, the most popular stories amongst the public didn’t focus on the federal government. Headlines were flooded with reporters’ ‘bravery’ in New Orleans, or were running away with runaway brides. And that whole Terri Schiavo deal made me want to gag and vomit until I choked!

Meanwhile, news sources from the Internet and overseas gave more focus to FEMA’s costly shortcomings, the 100,000 dead civilians in Iraq, and the overall historical incompetence of an administration and the Congress that’s supposed to check it. There was even occasional reports of how lobbyists slowly beat democracy into a bloody pulp – but no matter how many good stories you’d hear from an independent source, its quality couldn’t make up for the lack of people its message reached.

I’ll tell you what else wasn’t missing from 2005 – sports! Sports were everywhere in the media! All kinds of sports! You got sports with sticks, sports with water, and best of all, sports with balls! I love goin’ to my favorite bar, drinkin’ beer, sittin’ on a stool called democracy and watchin’ grown men play with balls! Woo! I heart drinkin’!

And let’s not forget about the entertainment world…who could ignore Hollywood’s hottest couple, Brad and Angelina, getting’ down and dirty after they made that one movie with bullets and explosions! Man, dirty celebrities, bullets and explosions are almost as sweet as sports!

Look, I love movies and I love sports. Really. I’m just questioning if the outlets of our modern media – Internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. – are really doing all they could to inform citizens about their own democracy. Think of media once more holding the political clout they did during the American Revolution – except bigger. Instead, they’ve sold out for cheap, immature profit derived from mindless consumers who don’t know any better. And the reason these buyers don’t know is because nobody is informing them on a mass scale. Hmmm, who could possibly have the power and means to mediate this important, democratic information to the teaming masses? Who, I ask, who?!

Perhaps I judge too harshly. Television is still young and immature – barely in people’s homes for forty years. In fact, radio hasn’t even been around for one hundred years. Movies barely popular for seventy-five. And internet? Please! Internet has only been in the hands of the public for twenty years, tops! Internet is a baby. A high-powered, all-knowing little baby.

Only newspapers and magazines have been consistently a part of major societies’ social aspects for centuries. Since the dawn of the printing press, civilizations entered a new time period, that in the future will be known as A.I. (After Ink). But even this invention, the largest attributer in human history to aid social advancement, has only been in human hands for a fraction of the time humans have been on Earth. Though the oldest in the group, written mass communication has yet to mature.

I just hope that media will mature soon. Until then, our democracy will remain just a wobbly little stool, floating around, awaiting another great American Revolution to come about and flush it down. Perhaps the media will have a hand in this. Add a few bullets and explosions – someone might even watch. •