As sources of information and entertainment go, television is definitely the easiest and most convenient medium. Didn't get to read the paper this morning? Just flip on CNN for a few minutes and you'll know all the major stories of the day. Can't follow your favorite team from Madison? Just look at ESPN's Bottom Line to find out who won. Television is a medium that takes little effort to follow and watching doesn't really require any constructive thought.
In fact, television news can make a lazy couch potato feel like he knows it all. That is why some of the news coverage I have seen recently makes me unhappy.
Because on television, what you see is what you get, TV news reporters have a power of persuasion that is virtually unmatched. A report and a picture give the side of any story that most people consider the absolute truth. It becomes a major problem, then, when a report presents only one side of the truth, an exaggeration of the truth or an opinion that the viewer assumes is fact.
On Fox News-whose motto is \We report, you decide""-there was a panel discussion recently on jury selection for the case of Scott Peterson, who stands accused of killing his pregnant wife Laci. Fox brought in two legal analysts, and used a supposedly neutral anchor to moderate. What I saw from the anchor, however, was far from neutral.
One of the experts was making the case that Mr. Peterson's trial should be moved to a location other than his hometown of Modesto, Calif. The moderator repeatedly interrupted the expert and made it seem as if he was defending a horrible man already guilty of an unconscionable act. When the expert tried to explain that many in the pool of potential jurors wouldn't be able to judge in an unbiased manner because the case hit too close to home for them, the moderator shot back, ""I think something like this hits all of us pretty close to home."" She then proceeded to end the discussion.
The anchor acted irresponsibly, clearly taking sides in an issue on which she was supposed to remain neutral. When the public only sees one side of the story, they will often assume that side is the story. Mr. Peterson, who already finds himself in a very tough position, will now have that much more trouble asserting his innocence because many Americans will follow the lead of reporters such as the Fox anchor and assume he is guilty.
Biased reporting can be subtler, too. Dan Rather and his colleagues did a good job presenting both sides of the story in CBS newscasts of the Iraq war during the NCAA basketball tournament. They reported American casualties somberly and didn't make the war seem like the cakewalk that many others made it out to be. Then, at the end of each news segment, CBS flashed a photograph of the New York City skyline that included the World Trade Center.
Say what you want about whether the war has been justified, but the image of the Towers subtly reinforced the false belief of many Americans that Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11, 2001 tragedy. The news is supposed to educate the public to make its own decisions, not drop hints telling people how to feel.
Other recent television news coverage has had bias also. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted that MSNBC removed from its Web site in a matter of hours an article saying that President Bush had mistated Iraq's nuclear intentions. And the now-famous scene of Iraqis rallying with Marines to down a statue of Saddam in Baghdad isn't quite as nice as it may seem; the close-up shots on American news outlets portrayed a huge, jubilant group, when in fact the crowd was fairly small.
Because it is so powerful, television news media must portray major events truthfully and impartially. Recently, that hasn't always been the case. The ability of viewers to create their own opinions has been jeopardized by biased coverage. That isn't what news is supposed to be about, and it isn't good for the country to have a public brainwashed by a propagandist media.
