I cannot let the information sit. I must synthesize and evaluate. Hypothesize. What I said before about media bias was wrong. Let’s try again. Here’s how I understand it:

It is the media’s goal to get you to buy its products. The media’s higher goal is not to serve the truth.

The media’s tool to accomplish this is sensationalism. “If it bleeds, it leads.” It’s the media’s job to make it sound as if the world is ending in order to make us buy papers and watch TV.

This may lead to a disconnect between the truth and what’s on paper. They will lead with headlines such as, “Jailers splashed Koran with urine – Pentagon.” I don’t believe it is the intention to mislead the people. I do not believe it is part of a left-wing agenda to undermine the Bush administration. It is simply what sells. No one will buy a newspaper, or click a link, with the headline, “Koran Mishandling Unintentional – Pentagon.”

Yet, is this acceptable? I cannot simply accept these misleading headlines as what they are.

Now, one may believe, as CNN Boy does, that “it’s forgivable in the sense that the headline writer knows we understand there’s more to the story.” Yet, he also acknowledges that “the ability to read headlines … is a learned attribute.” The problem is, most people don’t understand that there’s more to the story. The perception arises that the media is purposely biased. Perception is everything.

There is more to this story, though. I’ve concluded that the media is not intentionally biased, but I cannot rule out that it may be unintentionally biased. To illustrate this, I must take a slight detour.

We’re all not under the illusion that Fox News is “fair and balanced.” Fox News is obviously biased to the right. I speculate that this is the reason for Fox News’s success. I speculate that people flock towards it, and talk radio, because they do not find a voice for the right in the other news outlets.

Bear with me, as I try to illustrate this further. As I said earlier, it’s the media’s job to make it sound like it’s the end of the world. Thus, the Bush administration is just a likely casualty of the media. He’s the president and in order to make it sound like it’s the end of the world, it’s only natural that his policies must seem to be failing, no?

Then, how can we account for the success of Fox News? They triumph the Bush administration, and still get good ratings. It’s because they make it sound as if the left is bringing about the end of the world.

The people, the employees, in the traditional media outlets, I’ve heard, are mostly liberal. That is, the majority of persons lean ideologically more towards the left. (This information I will assume now and look up later.)

That is what naturally creates bias towards the left. Not some left-wing conspiracy.

The solution is simple, then. We cannot eliminate bias within newspapers. The misleading headlines can persist. However, we can create a balance of bias. I believe it is possible to have a happy medium between Fox News and, to throw something out there, the LA Times. The way to do this is to simply hire more conservatives.

With a more equal mix of political biases, the misleading headlines will not be perceived to be so sharply leaning towards the left. The biases will balance out within a newspaper or television show, and the people will not perceive some vast left-wing, or right-wing, agenda. I believe it will happen naturally, as long as it is a true balance, not the hiring of token opposition persons.