When I was a kid, I was always under the impression that the news was just the news; reporting on facts, with no bias or leanings. Maybe a little bit of personality from the anchors, and on snow days, waiting for the weather people, otherwise, waiting until the last 5-7 minutes of the show for sports, so I can see which team was the latest to fall to the Chicago Bulls or what Cal Ripken, Jr’s consecutive game streak was at. But that the FOX5 10 o’clock news was just news, the same as all other news outlets, and really nothing more.
I don’t think it was until the 2000 Presidential election did I realize that news outlets were far more capable of things other than just, the news. Regardless of what one feels about FOX News, there’s no denying their involvement in the 2000 election, about how they declared a victor a little too precariously early and their overwhelming support for the Republican party.
This experience opened my eyes that news sources were not as neutral and unbiased as I had grown up thinking they were, and that there were most definitely rosters of various sources taking difference sides and positions in political spectrum.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that I lean left when it comes to most facets of life, and I like to believe I’m a pretty liberal thinker, open-minded to lots of logical things. That being said, I used to often read the Huffington Post, because I appreciated their want to broadcast positive and uplifting stories, especially in a media-driven world hell-bent on reporting all the stories of violence, hatred, gunfire and war; if it bleeds, it leads, and there’s really only so much of it I can tolerate on a daily basis without feeling like I’m losing my humanity.