The end of neutral news

America has always been politically divided to some degree on a range of issues, especially during times of high tension. Even during these times of distress, major news outlets have existed as a beacon of truth, representing both sides and working to bring major issues into the public eye, even when those issues clashed with people’s preexisting assumptions. But, in recent years, there has been a stark increase in major news agencies giving in to their biased bases, representing skewed statistics, misinformation, partial truths, and, in some cases, promoting blatant hateful rhetoric. This growth of bias in some news agencies can lead some to produce media in the opposite direction, almost in hopes of counteracting the far right with the far left and vice versa. All of this leads to an erosion of trust on both sides and an overall degradation in the truth that only hurts the consumer.

In light of this, many small independent news outlets have been on the rise in the United States, becoming the preference for people looking to bridge the gap between political sides. These news outlets tend to be far less biased, as they are not controlled by any major companies or powerful people that could influence their views. The Washington Post is a great example of a news outlet that has succumbed to its owner, Jeff Bezos. It has made major cuts to its staff and overall funding, as well as started to push more political and technology coverage while moving away from local and less biased coverage. This news agency, which has given a prediction on who would win the presidential election for 36 consecutive years, decided not to endorse anyone in the 2024 election due to pressure from Bezos. What was once a highly respected news agency, one that I often used for reliable, unbiased news, has fallen from its grace and has lost respect. Personally, I found the changes within the paper to show much more than I expected, which I assume is because Bezos had most of the left-leaning staff cut, while keeping those he deemed to be more center or right-leaning. 

Small news agencies are very resilient to public persuasion and have the ability to avoid giving in to what their audience wants to hear. This allows the agencies to expose audiences to viewpoints that might not perfectly align with their own, because they often do not rely on just one group of people for their base. For example, Fox News only relies on a right-wing audience, and if Fox News were to try to expose its audience to left-leaning content, there would be extreme backlash, and chances are, it would lose significant viewership. The preferred relationship between a news outlet and its audience is for the news outlet to provide unbiased and accurate information to the audience, and for the audience to be able to receive and digest that accurate information, even if it conflicts with their beliefs, without giving backlash to the news agency. Sadly, this relationship is seldom achieved by major news outlets and their audiences. Fox News is one of the agencies that does not hold up this relationship; its base is generally built on Faith and Flag Conservatives. Faith and Flag Conservatives are generally considered to be far right, sometimes extremists, who often believe strongly in Christianity in government, smaller government, and extreme conservative social values. When Fox News was first founded, its goal was to be a right-wing news outlet, which led to an immediate bias being formed, and its reliability was already hurt. Once that bias was created, it drew an audience of many extremists, who found the already biased news agency to not be far right enough, encouraging Fox News to move to an even more extreme right-wing bias. This cycle has been perpetuated in the U.S. since the creation of the agency, leading to its current-day state, in which I often see misinformation, impartial truths, and blatant racist and xenophobic rhetoric spread on a mass scale. 

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) directly regulates broadcast media such as television, radio shows, and movies, and affects what media the public is exposed to. This commission used to run mostly separately from the United States Federal Government, with the president appointing five commissioners to run the agency on their own. But with Trump as president, he has begun to weaponize the FCC by appointing people lacking any qualifications for the job, and who act not as independent commissioners but as a direct line for the President to control the FCC. This has allowed him to threaten media agencies with lawsuits, fines, and pulling their shows off the air for a variety of commonly trumped-up charges or blatant false claims. For example, “The Late Show with Steven Colbert” has been set to be canceled due to pressure from the FCC, and while the parent company claimed it was due to financial reasons, Colbert has already come out criticizing CBS for “Bowing to FCC pressure.” The same thing happened to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” which was briefly pulled off the air once again due to the FCC threatening ABC with lawsuits. To me, this weaponization of the FCC is far scarier than any bias that is found in the news, as it directly threatens the First Amendment. Direct restriction from the government is, in many cases, the first step toward a full dictatorship, a place the United States seems to be taking steps toward faster and faster every day.

This downward spiral in reliability has been building and only leads to a greater division in ideologies across America, as individuals come to rely only on one or two major news networks, which will almost always lean one way or the other. Currently, there exist very few major media outlets that are truly moderate, forcing people to pick a side and no longer be exposed to other points of view, further distancing them from the opposing side.