Biased Journalists to Be Blamed for Media Bias?

This entertaining YouTube clip (which I am having difficulty embedding here) speaks about media bias and discusses some of the reasons why it occurs and why it's not going to stop. We raised some of these points in class, such as the fact that TV networks want money and let the business aspect drive their "balanced" views, and that extremist news show hosts do what they do because it gets them more viewers. A point that he brings up that I don't think we spoke about so much is the fact that journalists are generally liberal. They feel they have to prove their side of things and win everyone over to that opinion, so they are the ones getting involved in journalism and adulterating the news to have a liberal slant. Do you agree? Are journalists generally liberal and agenda driven?

The King's Speech: A Personal Struggle Publicized By Media

I recently saw the film "The King's Speech," which is an excellent movie that I highly recommend if you have not seen it. The premise of the film is that the younger son of the King George V of England has a stutter. After the King falls ill and dies, the throne eventually falls upon his son "Bertie." Bertie as King George VI has to make numerous speeches in person and on the radio and because of his stutter, this task scares, embarrasses, and frustrates him tremendously.

Although there is a lot to discuss about this movie, one point I'd like to focus on is the message of the media interfering with the personal lives of politicians. Before radio existed and became popular, the King would have had to speak to his people, but most people would not be hearing him in person, thus a secret of stuttering would be a lot less known to the population. At the time that the movie is set in, the King would address the nation at least every Christmas on the radio, and thus the King could not escape his fate of everyone knowing his weakness.

I think this example is the early stage of the phenomenon of media exposing personal struggles and relationships of people in political power. How often do we hear about a mayor, or governor, or congressman's rendezvous with another woman? Instead of focusing on the issues of the time, all we heard about Sarah Palin was about her daughter's pregnancy and her home life! Yes, some of these events do have significance to us, but many times they just expose something personal about a political figure and it does not affect their political views or capability to lead a city, state, or country.

The media does this because it sells. People like gossip. According to Jewish law, these types of stories would no doubt be considered Loshon Hara and Motzei Shem Ra. Perhaps I am tinted by my halachic perspective, but shouldn't there be a standard to leave people alone with their personal struggles and not publicize them to the world?

Could the Media Have Stopped Madoff?

One of the chapters assigned to read this week in Institutions of American Democracy: The Press was an essay entitled "The Watchdog Role," by W. Lance Bennett and William Serrin. The beginning of the chapter speaks about the role of media as a watchdog-that the media should investigate and document the activities of institutions in order to notify the public of these actions that may affect them. The authors note that although journalists do this most of the time, they "often miss early-warning signs of important activities that later blow up as scandals that prove costly to the public."

One scandal that comes to mind and that is being discussed again is that of the Madoff Ponzi Scheme. Madoff is now claiming that the banks "had to know" what he was up to, but that they ignored it and pretended not to realize.

For the sake of argument, let's assume Madoff is telling the truth. Is this something that the media should have somehow picked up on before it broke out into a huge scandal, affecting thousands of people and many many organizations? According to Madoff, there were "early-warning signs" that banks must have picked up on. Clearly if this is so, it was on the bank officials to look into the situation and investigate. If we take Madoff's statement as true, we now face many questions. Firstly, we now have to look into these banks and the bank executives who dealt with Madoff's accounts, and question why they did not notice anything for so long. Secondly, if they did notice sketchy business, why did they not look into it more? Thirdly, looking back, were there signs that the media could have picked up on? How could a better watch on Madoff and the banks have prevented the loss of millions of dollars?

Although I agree with Bennett and Serrin's assertion that the media should investigate and dig up facts to prevent crimes and fraud from blowing up into scandals, I don't think we can blame the media for missing early signs of scandal. In the Madoff case, if the banks didn't look into the situation themselves, how could we expect the media to? And even if the banks had scrutinized the situation, did but did not tip off the media, how could journalists have known? It takes a tip from an insider, the leakage of confidential information, for the media to have a breaking story. They need to be notified that something is going on in order for them to start digging up evidence.



As a side note, both Time Magazine and the NY Times had an article on this story. Time magazine says Madoff's son Daniel committed suicide, while NY Times says his name was Mark.

Someone needs to get their facts straight.