News junkies like me often keep a close eye on the media during newsworthy events like Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, but I never thought my media consumption would bring to light something so striking.
American media is not as “objective” as some might think.
Last Tuesday afternoon, I tuned into CNN, mostly because they offer 24-7 news coverage and none of the other networks had begun their election coverage yet. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you right off the bat that I wanted Barach Obama to be elected president. So I was interested in hearing that ‘all Obama or Romney has to do is carry the battle ground states like Ohio, and that candidate wins’.
When I tuned into CBS a little later in the evening, I began to notice a distinction between that network and CNN.
They were predicting, interpreting and reporting the results differently. The CBS anchor would say, ‘if Romney takes Ohio, then he wins’. They also seemed to be focusing on the states in which Romney was leading and what he had to do to achieve an overall lead to get to 270 electoral votes.
When I switched back to CNN, I noticed they were “interpreting” things the same way, but they seemed to be favouring the president. I was a little less annoyed by the Obama-favouring because of course that was what I wanted to hear.
However it got me thinking about the relationship between ethics and journalism and American versus American media.
As journalism students, we’re taught that complete objectivity is impossible. We’re also taught to be as fair and balanced in our reporting as possible and to always be conscious that we’re human beings with our own opinions and biases.
Perhaps the same kinds of overt bias I saw on U.S. Election Day exist in Canadian media at election time or just in general. But why haven’t I noticed these kinds of differences in Canadian news reporting? Have I not been paying enough attention? Or is American media actually that, for lack of a better phrase, corrupt?
Your comments are most welcome.
