Why is media agenda a problem?

I would like to discuss the importance of liberal slant in the media.  More importantly I would like to discuss why liberal slant in the media is bad.  You see I get the feeling that many Americans hear the term “liberal slant” but aren’t sure what to make of it.  I think many of them don’t understand the destructive nature of such a slant.  I mean how could they and continue to vote the way they vote?

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you are measuring the humidity of a room.  You measure the humidity and it shows 42%.  You take a shower and measure it again and find out that it went up 1% to 43%.  A week later you do the same thing and this time it goes up 2% to 44%.  Now a reporter with an agenda may report it as evidence of global warming in your house.  The reporter who is balanced, the reporter who cares about the truth might say something like this.  Despite claims of evidence that global warming was seen inside the house of John/Jane Doe it is in fact a problem with the device measuring the humidity.

Now the first problem is that the liberal slant story is much more flashy.  I mean honestly, regardless of your political affiliation do you really want to read a story about an issue with a hygrometer?  *yawn*  On the other hand evidence of global warming in someones house?!?  Wow,  that’s pretty cool.  The device in this example didn’t measure tenths of a percent.  Why is that significant?  Because if your device doesn’t measure tenths of a percent, and .5 is always rounded up then a change of .1% could read the same as 2.0%.  The first measurement was taken it went from 42.5 to 43.5 but read 42% to 43%.  The second example went from  42.4 (showing 42%) to 43.5 (showing 44%).  When you have media with an agenda they will report the story in such a way as to prove their point instead of asking why, instead of gathering all of the facts.  In the example the story told is not a lie, but it isn’t the truth either.  The point is they report the exciting story regardless of their understanding.

The other trick the liberal media does is omission.  Can anybody tell me what happened with the Charlie Wrangle deal?  He hasn’t even lost his job?  What do you think would happen to a regular citizen?  Shouldn’t our representatives be held to a higher standard than the rest of America?  I digress.

The problem with an agenda in our media is that the First Amendment to our Constitution was to provide for a ‘watchdog’ media.  It was designed that way in order to keep the citizenry informed on the behavior of our representatives so that we could throw the bums out when they didn’t act in the best interests of the nation.

Case in point.  Government run health care.  The liberal slant in our mainstream media has reported that Government run health care will be better and cheaper than the current system.  This argument is so full of holes that the only way anyone would believe such rubbish is if the mainstream media was complicit.

In the 234 year history of our nation there has never been an example of the government doing anything cheaper than the private sector.  There are also no examples of the government doing anything better than the private sector.  So the fact that they can do it both cheaper AND better ought to send up a red flag.

Today congress put off a plan to reduce medicare reimbursement to doctors from December 1st until January 1st.  Of course you can find this story (if you dig for it), but they won’t talk about the consequences of the action.  (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-19/delay-on-doctors-medicare-pay-cut-gives-time-for-longer-fix.html).  If you have a business and you have many clients aren’t you going to serve the clients that pay full price before those who get 23% off?  Why would doctors be different?

One of the reasons doctors become doctors is for the money.  Some people believe that they do it to help people, but there are a lot of ways to help people without becoming a doctor.  In order to become a doctor you must undertake an enormous amount of school, followed by rotations and internships.  Then the day you are finally a full fledged doctor you get to undertake an enormous amount of risk, often being sued for situations beyond your control.  The bottom line is that the government will have to pay doctors less to keep our tax rate below 80% and if we use the most simple logic we can see less people will become doctors.  When you combine that with supply and demand, without the supply because you have government controlling the supply side,  you end up with worse care for more money. (Incidentally the situation is further exacerbated by the fact that demand will go up because the out of pocket cost is zero.)  The mainstream media is guilty of omission here as they aren’t reporting the obvious logical conclusions.  They are guilty of omission because they haven’t reported on the disaster that government health care has become in other countries and they are guilty of omission because they haven’t reported that England is trying to reverse their government health care system because of the problems it produced.

Honestly I hope this opens someones eyes because every year the agenda in our media seems worse than the year before.  The next question is what can I do about it?  Well the media makes its money from you.  Stop watching news that has an agenda.  Stop reading papers with an agenda.  When all choices have an agenda, choose the one with the least agenda and write letters and emails to the producers of that particular media and let them know you would appreciate the truth,…  the whole truth.