The Importance of Unbiased Press

While enjoying the relatively mild weather and being extremely thankful to have made it home (and onto a plane) before the monster blizzard hit the Northwest, I came across a story about said blizzard on Fox news while absentmindedly flipping through channels. The news piece started off focusing on how some people lacked heating oil for the cold but quickly took a sharp turn into the political issue of climate change and the Obama administration’s proposed Clean Air Act. During the show, reporters and commentators were providing their opinions about climate change and stating how the resulting blizzard was a sign that global warming was completely false. I have not watched Fox news in a very long time; however, I have kept up with the relative controversy surrounding Fox including comments made by President Obama attacking the organization as disreputable last year.  At first I did not place much weight in this as I found it hard to believe that a news organization providing blatantly biased views and “news” could ever consistently command the best news ratings among all cable news shows. I wrote it off as “oh, they are slightly conservative, but every news agency has some bias”. However, this instance of viewing Fox definitely shattered this perception. Fox News has a great power to inform people’s opinions on a variety of issues; however, it is failing in this responsibility by attempting to distort scientific fact. I realize that I am slightly late to the party as Fox has been solidly against any Democratic plans for climate change since the Reagan administration, but I thought that the arguments utilized were ones made for ideological reasons and not necessarily destructive attempts to boost ratings. Historically, the Republican party actually started the conservation movement under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt; however, a dramatic shift occurred in the 80s when the Reagan administration labeled environmental regulations as an unnecessary burden by big-government. This political divide has only grown wider in recent years with the increased understanding and exposure of global warming to mainstream America.  There are a few aspects of global warming that, insofar as the scientific community is concerned, have been proven: human activity releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, CO2 levels have been rising very quickly, high levels of CO2 lead to global warming. In short, global warming is occurring, and the only thing left to argue is the appropriate response. Conservatives have favored a more measured response to global warming as they believe that the impacts of global warming are exaggerated. This argument is tenable; however, Fox likes to spin scientific evidence so it  is misleading. This reporting is what crosses the line as it is dangerously misleading to the public (global warming opinion poll between Republicans and Democrats). The initial scientists who discovered the rising CO2 levels and the early evidence of global warming believed that the issue would become one that the nation could rally around. However, the principal debate about what should be done about global warming has become one that is bogged down in political drivel and unnecessary debates on moot points. These are not a direct result of but are definitely fostered by conservative news agencies like Fox.  Although I do not always agree with Fox News opinions or programming, I do believe that it is important for both sides of the political agenda to be represented in mainstream media. It is very important for voters to be exposed to both sides in order to be able to make well-informed decisions. I fear that somewhere along the way, news agencies on both sides have crossed the line between news and entertainment. The free press has a great responsibility to the American people to provide news that is, at the minimum, true. The effects of a distortion of this mission cannot be overestimated.
photo credit: http://static01.mediaite.com/med/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/fnc_4-142.jpg