Election Fact or Fiction?

There may be shortages of everything else, but if there's one thing of which there's plenty, it's information. Turn on the television, turn on the computer, turn on the radio and one is immediately inundated with news of the elections.

Unfortunately...with all of these news choices, how does one know what information to trust?

In addition, if all the news sources are in agreement...how does one know if that message is really the truth?

With little extra time to spend perusing numerous news outlets, I find myself searching whatever is most accessible. Sometimes it's the New York Times outside my apartment, sometimes it's CNN on the television in the kitchen, sometimes it's the Los Angeles Times website while doing homework, and sometimes it's just Youtube.

But in almost all of these cases I am getting an analysis of original material I did not have time to see firsthand. For example, I never saw Katie Couric's interview with Governor Sarah Palin, but I did see snips of it on CNN. I did see clips of it on Youtube. And I did see a parody of it on Saturday Night Live.

It seems as though this should be sufficient to get the general idea of what the interview was about. And, in some cases that's correct. However, I am finding more and more with this election that getting an analysis of a debate or an interview is not enough. Because try as they might to be unbiased, journalists know how important this election is and they can not help but let their own opinions color their content.

If I am unable to see original interviews and debates, I assume that many people are in the same situation...and I find that frightening. It has gotten to the point where the news media has transcended from the realm of telling what happened, to telling us what we should think about what happened...leave that to the real experts.

Nowhere is there a better example of this than with Palin. Don't get me wrong, I don't like Palin. I will say here and now that I voted for Senator Obama. But it is an absolute embarrassment to me how the news media has represented Palin. They have attacked everything from her accent to her spending habits...trying to find every negative aspect of the republican vice presidential candidate, while Senator Joe Biden remains relatively unexamined. Granted, Biden is an old hand in the Senate, but since when does being around a long time exclude you from having skeletons in your closet?

For me it is a strange dilemma. I appreciate, however bitterly, that much of the media is slanted towards Obama. It helps a candidate I support. But the blatant departure from well-balanced news is unacceptable.

This shift is highlighted by such steps as the endorsement of Obama by the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. By definition, journalists do not pick sides. When did people forget this?

Journalists are given a tremendous power to write the first draft of history. They are given tremendous power to influence the thoughts and actions of people across the world. For whatever reason and to whatever ends, good or bad, journalists today are abusing that power. Just because Fox News is biased, and always has been, doesn't mean that other news organizations have to imitate that bias from the other side.


Journalists need to put aside their agendas and tell us everything they can about every candidate, because this might be the most important election we ever vote in and none of us want to be fooled into thinking someone's opinion is fact.