Journalism is important to our society
because it is how consumers get their information. With so many news outlets
today, it is hard to know if the information you are getting is true or not.
Throughout our investigation, we learned that some of the most popular news
outlets are not as reliable as we thought. According to the Society of
Professional Journalism, it is in the Code of Ethics to be “accurate and fair,”
but somehow the truth sometimes turns into truthiness (SPJ, 2014).
Satire takes an
interesting approach to how they present the news. Although a lot of the facts
presented in the videos are foggy and full of truthiness, this is done on
purpose. Satire is very straightforward in what sides of the argument they are
on to achieve their goal of persuasion. They take the viewpoint of someone who
could counter argue them and explain why they think that the information is
wrong or ineffective. Another tactic satire uses is presenting very few facts.
The videos are based around what McManus would call “Infotainment” (McManus,
163). Although facts and opinions are being presented, it is “just a sugar
coating of entertainment” that makes information appealing and “can mislead us
to think we’re keeping up with current affairs, when in fact we’re merely being
amused” (McManus, 164). Oddly enough, the satire news sources seemed to be more
reliable than other news sources, like Fox News.
It is well known
that Fox News has a more conservative bias. Max Ehrenfreund from The Washington
Post quoted researchers Gregory Martin and Ali Yurukoglu when he said “[They]
found that watching four more minutes of Fox a week makes you 0.9 percentage points
more likely to vote Republican, while watching MSNBC for four more minutes
makes you 0.7 percentage points more likely to vote Democrat (Ehrenfruend,
2015). With climate change typically finding strong support from a more liberal
ideology, Fox News bias becomes very apparent upon checking their facts. It can
be concluded that the three videos analyzed did not showcase good
journalism. If they were to cite their
sources, state less opinion, present more factual evidence that could be traced
back to a credible source, interview guests who hold higher credentials, and
directly answer or discuss a topic just as it is presented; this media outlet
would be a place viewers could trust. As stated before, the Society of
Professional Journalists has a code of ethics that journalists should follow.
The four guidelines that SPJ states that journalists should follow are “seek
truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and
transparent” (SPJ, 2014) however, videos from Fox News did not abide by most of
these standards.
On the other hand, MSNBC is also biased
in the fact that they present more information supporting climate change.
However, unlike Fox News, MSNBC is more reliable based on the six videos
analyzed. A majority of the data presented on the news channel did not have a
source, but the information, for the most part was not hard to find and confirm
factual. In align with the network’s bias it didn’t present any information
from a different point of view, but that is to be expected in media today. Due
to the selective processes people choose to listen to news from their ideology—
and it is hard to get people to change. Because of this, it is in your best
interest to listen to factual information from your biased viewpoint.
Lastly, the two speeches were the most
reliable and unreliable out of all the news sources. Due to the fact that
President Obama represents our country, he is held accountable by the whole
world, and knows that he has an influence on many people: it is imperative that
what he says is factual. Whereas, Giaever is politically insignificant he was
able to take more risks and state less reliable facts. Giaever is a physicist,
however he received most of his information from googling. He doesn’t truly
care about his non-belief in climate change; he just wants to persuade people
into taking his side and therefore didn’t properly look into his facts. Just
like in mainstream media, you cannot always believe the facts stated in
speeches, and as members of society it is our duty to fact check our media
outlets even if we think they are reliable sources.
Upon our investigation we learned that
some news sources are more reliable than others. People are prone to the
dependency theory and their world views and opinions are shaped by the news
sources they watch. Knowing this, it is important to choose your news sources
wisely because your viewpoints on political issues and current events are
affected by the information you absorb.