There's no way you haven't experienced media in your life. Absolutely no way. .Wanna know how I know? Because it's right on top of this page. The official definition of media is as follows:
Newspapers, Snapchat, Reddit, plzmrdalton.blogspot.com, they're all media. While often bias, media is important in our society as a linkage institution. What is a linkage institution? Go google it yourself, why you asking me?
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Okay fine, a linkage institution is something that connects the general public to the government. Some examples include interest groups, political parties, elections and media. If you don't know what those are, go look at my previous posts. Or you know, go google it.
Getting back on topic, media is a linkage institution because it keeps us informed about the current situation of our government and politics. While it's good to know what horrible disaster is occurring in our government each day, it's often difficult to figure out the facts, as media is almost always bias, as the writers want to push their political views upon others, so that their views will be supported and thus voted upon. Don't believe me? I'll prove it! Let's look at two different news sources of the same topic, using President Donald Trump's meeting with the French president Emmanuel Macron as an example. The first source comes from the New Yorker, which is a consistently liberal news source according to PewResearch.org Remember, most liberals are against our current president. Because people like reading news that supports their own views, those who align with libral views will read from this source. Our second source comes from Breitbart news network, who are said to be consistently conservative by PewResearch.org Of course, conservatives will most likely read from this source. Note that conservatives usually support our current president. Enough with the background info, do some enjoyable, exciting, energizing analysis!
Firstly, here are the facts about the subject that I could find. Emmanuel came to commemorate the fallen US soldiers of WW1 on the centennial, while Trump declined to, because of rain. Later, the two presidents met in person during a bilateral meeting. According to the source, Macron stated that Patriotism and Nationalism were two different things, with the latter being worse than the former. This was most likely stated because of Trump being declaring himself a nationalist earlier that month. After, Trump used Twitter (oh hey another example of media) to question Emmanuel's statement of building an army.
In addition, he argued against the high tariff on US wine in France, and used the line "Make France Great Again!" because of the French President's low approval rating. This source gives some insight on the meeting between the two presidents through the lens of a liberal. The article is convincing in painting Donald Trump in a bad light, but is very one sided and bias in it's analysis. The writer states that the president's "unchangeable oafish cruelty" was revealed in the events, which is unquestionable bias. Also, the source states that he's always wrong and "incapable of understanding the concept of an alliance at all, much as he does not seem to understand the concept of loyalty." While no information seems to be missing, the rhetorical device pathos is being heavily used to invoke outrage in the reader. As stated previously, the author continuously insults Trump's intelligence. This was most likely due to the site being aimed towards liberals, and the author wanted to support the views the the readers. If the liberal readers continuously read news supporting Trump, then they would disapprove of the content, and switch to a different news source. Basically, the author is catering towards their audience. From this, readers will have their own opinions reinforced, and become less likely to change viewpoints in the future.
The second news source comes from BreitBart, and covers the same topic as the previous source. However, this source completely ignores Trump's declination to attend the WW1 centennial. In addition, it puts Trump in a better light. This honestly isn't that surprising, as BretiBart supports Trump in their posts. Why would you tell people about the president's failures if you're a news site that supports him? In a perfect world the media would be more unbiased, but that's probably not gonna happen anytime soon. The article itself is convincing enough, but it could just be because I'm an easily swayed person. I mean, if you believed that the article is convincing merely because some random kid on the internet said so, then you should probably re-evaluate your life. Anyway, as stated before, bias was indeed a thing that exists, with the ww1 centenial not being mentioned. In addition, the article implied that Trump made was retorting to the Macron's statement about the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Similar to the previous article, the writer was influenced by the website, as people reading it likely supported Trump. Welp, that's basically all I got for this post. Now to go write the 5th and final post
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