Do Journalists Have a Duty to Eliminate as Much Bias as Possible?

The journalism is dead; and even in its death, we continue to desecrate its remains.The very nation that swore to protect it, have either succumb to greed and sold their souls metaphorically or have since passed, leaving only the corrupted. Do journalists have a duty to eliminate as much bias as possible? Journalism is a essential part of a democratic society, but when that very society begins to fall victim to corruption, a abuse of power is inevitable. Especially when throughout the decades the righteous and ethical journalism community deteriorates further and further swaying from the truth.

The very lifestyle and society George Orwell eluded to and warned of in his book 1984, a dystopian society fallen to oppression from its government, has become a grim reality over the years. Unfortunately, we did not adhere to his prophecy, and have consequently fallen into a orwellian society, slaves with the illusion of freedom. SLaves without shackles. This should trouble every citizen, hell every single human being, this should be cause for concern. But the wretched reality of it is, the mass majority of the population are blind or have been conditioned for so long to believe in your country's atrocities and corruption unconditionally. they can't differentiate from the biased “truth” they are informed to believe, to the subconscious belief they hold themselves.

Unfortunately, the media makes an effort to leave things one sided as to fit their agenda and refuse to report on sensitive subjects, and when the media does, its so screwed and misconfigured, it can't even register as truth or factual. The praised fundamental journalistic media for its unrelenting truth in the past years seemed to have succumb to corruption, and the current state of journalism, is a failing one and one that cannot be sustained virtuously.

Order custom essay Do Journalists Have a Duty to Eliminate as Much Bias as Possible? with free plagiarism report

450+ experts on 30 subjects Starting from 3 hours delivery

Get Essay Help

Journalism has become so saturated with bias in the media, it's now begun to interfere with the spread of free flowing information. Freedom of Speech is threatened by the media and continues to be a target of oppression. Facebook, for example recently “purged” or removed over 800 political pages or accounts, and have been accused of censorship. “Drawing the line between ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ views is a difficult enterprise that could put everything from important political parody to genuine but outlandish views on the chopping block,” says Eidelman. “It could also chill individuals who only feel safe speaking out anonymously or pseudonymously.” The Guardian, Dan Tynan. This is immediate cause for concern, The “Big 6” as its often referenced, controls 90% of the media, and when a entity has that much control over a market, they're basically free to say or do whatever they see fit with minuscule consequences.

History continues to repeat itself, John David Rockefeller who founded Standard Oil is a solid example of the current state of the media. Rockefeller whos legacy and family still have influence and fortunes today, bought out all of his competition, leaving only himself and a small handful of other outlets which were doomed to fail due to the wretched size of the company. Were seeing a similar thing occuring with the media, currently 6 companies own all major media outlets, leaving little to no room for other outlets. The pages and accounts facebook took down were no mere journalists either, many of the accounts that vanished had well above a million followers and had been in existence for years. These pages are often referred to as alternative media and activists on both sides of the spectrum were affected. No one is safe except mainstream corporate media. Activists deleted include “The Free Thought Program” a libertarian leaning page with over a 3 million likes and a official website.

CopBlock and Police the Police, pages dedicated to exposing intolerable acts within the police force such as police brutality and corruption, were also affected by Facebook's own version of the Salem Witch Trials referred to online as a “Facebook purge”. Other pages affected include Reverb Press with 816,000 followers, “The Resistance” with 240,000 followers, Nation in Distress, Reasonable People Unite, Photography is Not A Crime” have been said to have suffered severe restrictions. as well as Anti-Drug-War and anti war pages. The Free Thoughts founder took to twitter to cite his response “Jason Bassler, of the Free Thought Program, wrote on Facebook, “So it appears that Facebook has unpublished our page along with at least 28 more pages that we currently know of including personal profiles. Yes, you read that correct.

After 5 years of hard work, literally working 7 days a week to share information and build fans Facebook has officially unpublished our page The Free Thought Project (3.1 million fans) as well as Police the Police (1.9 million fans) so we can’t post on it anymore. It is still live on their site, but we can no longer control it or post on it. This is truly an outrage”. Many drew conclusions that the accounts and pages targeted were those that were referred to as government accountability and critical groups. Right Wing News, yet another page deleted from facebook, previous page owner John Hawkins and The Free Thought Projects Jason Bassler also found that shortly after their pages were wiped from existence and the information gone with it, that their twitter pages were also suspended quickly after. Hawkins took to Twitter, “So, the NYT did a hit piece on me today regarding the Facebook page I used to run.

After that, Twitter suspended one of my accounts with no reason why given. Since Twitter & FB may be about to zero me out, can’t hurt to go on.” shortly after he published this tweet, he was suspended on twitter yet again. Facebook argues that they deleted the accounts and pages not on grounds of political bias; a frequent topic in recent years with facebook being under fire even by congress, but on the grounds that the users were fake and were “ad farming” as they referred to it. “their owners were using fake accounts, sharing the same content between multiple pages, and linking to ad-supported websites.” a statement given by FaceBook from Facebook's Newsroom. What they fail to realize is that these people dedicating their lives to journalism and the spread of information, also need to make a living. And in a monetized world where any inconvenience truth is found offensive, you're censored.

These activists publish ads on their sites or pages only due to the fact that they need a steady source of income also. Facebook also fails to realize that these pages do occasionally swap content as facebook accused them. But as a employee who was involved with 9 members of the pages purged acknowledged, that yes they occasionally swap content, it's what he described as the most valid and best content. If you take a objective look at mainstream news outlets, you will see a continuous rephrasal of the same stories if they are current events and important. If you were to look up reports on 9/11 youd find the same images within the same few papers and the same report.

Of course these alternative outlets are going to contain similar content at times, if they are reporting media and critiquing officials, i think it's important we have access to not only the objective truth since that's difficult to come by, but multiple independent sources as opposed to corporate news stations. In mainstream media, they have mass amounts of sponsors and contributors who are behind the curtains telling you what to buy and think, but that's rarely spoken upon. Facebook also attempts to argue that their actions were constituted by that they

Concentration of Media Ownership, a Slow and Dreadful Death of Journalism

If somebody gave you a bowl of only 6 viles and told you that you had the choice to pick your poison, you'd be repulsed and flabbergasted that somebody would even offer such a trivial objective. On a larger scale, this is essentially what the mainstream media subjects its viewers to. A total of 6 Men, make up the vast majority of all Networks of media including the news outlets. These men with tremendous amount of political sway and influence as well as a pocket full of cash can virtually achieve or say anything they see fit to further their agendas. The amount of media outlets that are available to the everyday consumer gives them the illusion of truth, when in reality independent sites are almost always deemed unreliable as opposed to the big media outlets, who are all owned by the same 6 businessman. In 1983, 90% of the American mainstream media was controlled and owned by 50 companies.

In 2011, the same 90% of outlets are now only controlled by 6 companies or corporations. The Big 6 also account for 70% of cable television, 3762 businesses contribute to the remaining 30%. 232 business executes hold complete control over the information and media accessed by more than 277 million Americans, equivalent to 1 media executive to 850,000 subscribers. Comcast NBC merger alone accounted for 1 hour of every 5 hours of television.

In 1995 the FCC forbade and outlawed corporations and companies from owning over 40 stations on the radio yet, Clear Chanel owns 1,200 stations currently. 178 million unique users read Time Warner News every single month. Statistics courtesy of Business Insiders, Ashley Lutz. These figures put into perspective just how much journalism and media have changed and the current unsustainable state of journalism. Our society has become so indoctrinated and quite frankly brainwashed into blindly following agendas that so frequently lead to more problems than solutions for everyday citizens and constantly wreak greedy benefits for the already rich. The consolidation of media is restricting valid and essential point of views that may help prevent the tyrannical media from complete censored domination.

The American Dream and the current state of journalism, essential defining beliefs in our culture, is dead. Though some argue perhaps it never lived, and was all a large farce orchestrated as a get the rich richer scheme, because in hindsight, the western civilization ideology lifestyle is unsustainable in its current state especially. it's called The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. controversial topics in not only american history, but all throughout the world have been made possible to study and analyze thanks to journalist of not only our time but theirs. What's unfortunately not acknowledged is the media's political bias towards these topics and our failure to learn from history. Many controversial topics resulted in severe repercussions which shaped a new age in our society, many of which were misconfigured and screwed to obstruct the objective reporting as to fit a certain political view or agenda.

For example, the ongoing Israel-Palestine Conflict in the Middle East, the media has its political bias towards Israel, when in objective facts, the Palestinians are oppressed citizens with no official military leaving them completely defenseless. America is also in public relations with Israel and are heavily involved with one another even going as far to donate a average of 3 billion dollars a year. 9/11, which incidentally led to the reform of what the definition of freedom means restricting civil liberties and put laws and regulations such as the Patriot Act a little more than a month after 9/11 which allowed the US government to be more lenient with invading privacies such as wiretapping and led to the creation of HomeLand Security in 2002.

The media failed to inform the public dire details within these regulations as well as made the decision on their own. A democratic society to me is a unified body of citizens coming together collectively to further or sustain their level of democratic freedom and civil liberties. When a society adapts this ideology it's up to the people elected in charge to uphold these views, but when those very officials fall to corruption and selfish motives, the entire society deteriorates. It's up to journalists to evaluate and analyze officials and their motivations, regardless of what the media is pushing. On September 10th 2001, the pentagon made a announcement that they could not account for 2.3 trillion dollars, announced by Donald Rumsfeld.

The next day, the place where the information containing the whereabouts of the trillions of taxpayer money gone missing is destroyed by the pentagon attack during 9/11. Larry Silverstein, the lease owner of the Trade Centers took out a insurance policy/plan that covered terrorism 2 months before the dreadful events of 9/11. After the events, Silverstein took the insurance company to court and argued he should be paid double since 2 terrorist attacks occured, he won and was rewarded $4,550,000,000. 9/11 also led to the cause of a war in the Middle East nobody was looking for which also led to the foreign policies of oil being distributed in the US from the sources in the Middle East, and we all know how much American economy loves oil as evident by J.D Rockefeller.

Architects and engineers also began a nonprofit organization attempting to conduct a independent investigation of that fateful day. Many engineers and architects have gone on record to say that the mathematics of the attacks do not constitute that jet fuel (which burns at 1500 degrees, whilst steel melts at 2300-2700 degrees) burning did not lead to the collapse, but rather a controlled demolition. Trace amounts of explosives were also found at ground zero which led many to question the official narrative, especially because the media refuses to report on any obscurities within the story.

Although a outlandish view to most, the unofficial narrative proposed by alternative journalists deserves some sort of recognition. Every single person is unique and is entitled to their own opinion. Its dire in our society that we do our own research and information and decide for ourselves our views as opposed to chained to a 9-5 job and being force fed political views through a talking box. A important philosophy in objective journalism is to question everything. Especially when looking back at history we see the scientific achievements made by civilizations, that though add up, are not held to be correct today.

For example, until semi recently we believed the earth was heliocentric popularized by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 17th century. Whos to say in another 500 years the future civilizations will hold different beliefs? “Facts” are ever changing due to misconceptions or downright false truths and regardless of corporate or independent media, all views and opinions should be expressed if they are genuinely held by a body of people. In more recent times, A American journalist named Jamal Khashoggi traveled to Saudi Arabia and was promptly gruesomely dismembered and murdered. The journalist wrote for the Washington Post and was reportedly critical of the Saudi Arabian government.

Coincidentally, Saudi Arabia gifted America 100 million dollars the same day Mike Pompeo traveled there to discuss the disappearance of the journalist, raising eyebrows of many as to if it could possible be the payoff of the death of the journalist. The freedom of journalism is being stifled right before our eyes, and its being bought by corporations. American as a whole has become a business corporation, in all reality we sold this nation a long time ago. “But the consul was present and objected, the official said. “Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” Mr. Otaibi told the agents, according to the Turkish official and a report in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak.

Both cited audio recordings said to have been obtained by Turkish intelligence.” The journalist is said to have been attacked by about 15 Saudi citizens with ties to Crown Prince Mohammed. Officials all over the world have grown corrupt and are no strangers to taking payouts. Khashoggi went to Arabia to acquire documents that would allow him and his fiancee to marry, and was swiftly abducted inside the consul and silenced. A journalist was not only censored but was murdered for his views. If that doesn't speak to the state of journalism, nothing will. Its difficult to constitute all factors of situations and points of view, but by today's standards, objective journalism is dead and nobody seems to care.

Society has become indoctrinated by a invalid belief system that's not only corrupted journalism, but society as a whole. Bias in corporate media has begun to deteriorate the journalism community and is interfering with freedom of speech and press. Journalism is a essential part in a sustainable democratic society, a tool that is used to evaluate those in charge and analyze their motivations. Every single person is unique in their own sense and everyone has the right to basic human liberties such as opinions.

Everyone is subjected to their own unique culture or belief, in short, to be human is to express yourself and hold personal views. However, when personal biases begin to find themselves quietly in front of large masses of people, their opinions begin to be shaped. The media continuously obscures and obstructs the objective truth while pushing agendas and biases upon people. The concentration of media ownership has made objective journalism a thing of the past and pushed us into a new age of conditioned beliefs. The big media corporations have managed to oppress genuine independent journalists and slandering these alternative media activists every chance they get.

Although today's media gives you the illusion of choice, in reality corporations have taken over the journalist community and have infiltrated households everywhere, subjecting them to the equivalent of brainwashing. Journalism can be about the reporting of objective facts or political views or opinions one holds, but it's extremely difficult if not impossible to balance both. True objective journalism is a necessity in a functional society, but the definition of objective journalism has been misinterpreted by the mainstream media outlets, pushing points of views at every turn.

Every single person holds their own unique opinions, and in our democratic society its important all voices are heard. But when mainstream media begins censoring the spread of information to subject viewers to a certain way of thinking, our society needs to be reevaluated. Opinions are a inevitable part of human nature and if we were all not unique and subject to our own views, we wouldn't be living. Unfortunately however the media fell victim to corruption and corporations now control the flow of 90% of the information presented leading misconceptions and manipulation. Objective journalism is dead, and corporate media killed it.

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Run a free check or have your essay done for you

Check my essay Hire Writer