With the passing of Tim Russert, it’s possible that the death knell for objectivity in American media rang out. It’s hard to believe much of the information that penetrates our consciousness is legitimate news anymore. The outrageous bias of the media is just not acceptable. Anything that can be spun by a commentator will be spun. The coverage of both National Party Conventions was appalling. When the RNC was being covered, MSNBC had Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews on call to assault anything the Republicans said. At the same time, Fox News had Sean Hannity there to glorify the conservatives. At the DNC, it was quite the opposite. 

Generally speaking, the media heavily favors liberals and the Democratic Party (recall nastiness towards President Bush and glorification of President Obama). This includes the three major networks, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. However, one cannot ignore the conservative strongholds of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the conservative stalwarts of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on talk radio. They all have a major voice in polarizing the American populous. They are all the reason that politics is such an ugly business in the United States. Because they present their view as fact, it gives the uneducated viewer no room to make up their own mind. Instead of letting the consumer develop their own opinion, most sources editorialize the news sections as well. This leads to a mass of uninformed people electing a candidate based on lies, half truths, and character attacks. This is not healthy for American democracy. While networks are (and should be) able to present their view any way they desire, it’s a shame that reporting the facts has fallen by the wayside. That leaves we, as teenagers, separating fact from opinion on our own, something that many of us are not prepared to do.