In his show, Jon Stewart has done it again.
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/faezep/mighty-morphin-position-changers
He poignantly explained the differences of how Fox News covers its new stories. It is a blind hypocrisy for decrying one side of an argument while remaining incredibly silent on the other side. (The video explains a better please click on it.)
But it raises an issue not just specific to Fox News. Every news agency has been doing this for years now. A slant, a bias, a derived message. They've become nothing more than an opinion machines more than news outlets. As I said this happens on both sides of the aisle so it would be improper to demonize one side without admitting that MSNBC does the exact same thing.
Even Rachel Maddow admits that her program and network does pretty much the same thing that Fox does. The only difference is that they tend to be closer routed to the facts than Fox. That's where the debate really lies because if I'm about to tell you story, you're assuming that I am presenting a balanced argument. Especially if you find that I am a news person who you are trusting to provide information to.
It's something that Stephen Colbert once referred to as "truthiness." Defined as:
"the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true."
Which is exactly what Fox and MSNBC does. It's what CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS does. That's why it's very disheartening that if you want to get completely unbiased information, you have to go out of the United States to do it where corporate interests may not necessarily interfere with the actual news content.
That's the state of media today.
That's the state of journalism today.
It's something that I have been incredibly passionate about for a long time. We simply cannot rely on any of our news sources for information. We want news that feels good to us and is crafted in a way that molds to our belief of truth.
We have to be willing to look at ourselves in the mirror honestly. We can't do that if we keep wrapping ourselves in red, white, blue. We have all become patriotic to a fault. If we are truly going to be cooperative partners in the future we have to be completely honest with ourselves.
That doesn't make me unpatriotic. I believe in the United States, I believe in our founding fathers belief that we can be a better country for the world. But if we start looking at Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, it's become a schoolyard of bullies and fights. It makes a lot of people become turned off and it is incredibly despicable to think that our electorate and our propaganda mechanism known as the media insists on lowering the bar instead of raising it.
We have lost accountability.
We have lost honesty.
We have lost integrity.
And before you turn on the radio, or pick up your newspaper, or look online to see how your favorite political hack looks of this - realize that you can make independent decisions based on your own morality and beliefs.
We all have a fundamental basis of what's right and wrong in this country. We can continually point fingers back-and-forth to no avail, but in the end the message gets lost in the truth diminishes.
Admittedly I have probably have grown very tired of politics. I have grown tired of the antics of some idiots that want to go ahead and to question my patriotism because I ask, I demand accountability and honesty when they report their "facts" for the general public.
We as a nation have no concept as to what these dividing forces have on our nation. We are more alike than we think if we were to sit down and have an honest discussion about morality and what should and shouldn't be done in this country. If we stop listening to these dividing forces we can come together and we can grow. I'm sick and tired of rewriting our history and our science to accommodate a religious theocracy that is heavily flawed.
We need to grow. We need to move forward.
Change needs to happen.
