2008 Woodie Awards
Media bares distorted eye-view, a cracked lens
Sara Shoenleber
Issue date: 11/4/04 Section: Op/Ed
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We, as students, trust the national news media as an information source: a clear lens through which we can see the world. Its purpose is to go where we cannot and give us a clear report of what is going on. Unfortunately, our major news media does not even begin to give us accurate reporting of important events in our world. I'm not just talking about Fox News Channel's "fair and balanced" approach to blatant bias; this is a matter of news distortion as an entirety.
The news picks and chooses facts to give the public. A perfect example is the Lori Hacking murder case. As soon as Lori Hacking was reported missing, the news quickly brought up the question of whether her husband Mark was responsible. They repeated that authorities were "unsure" of Mark's involvement in the case. They were also unsure at that point of the involvement of the mailman and the family goldfish, due to the fact that investigations had not been completed. The media in this case rushed to the implicit conclusion that Hacking was a suspect. He was actually later arrested on the charge of the murder of his wife, but had he been innocent, he would have had to live the rest of his life being treated like the next O.J. Simpson as a result of media spin.
Why would the news networks be so quick to convict Mark Hacking? Also, there are hundreds of murders every day; why would the news spend all of its time on a particular case? Just look at how much people tuned in every time there was a new development in the Laci Peterson case of a few weeks prior, which followed a similar formula. Call me cynical, but viewers mean money.
Another, far more troubling example of media distortion is the coverage of the current genocide in Sudan. It was only after independent research did I read specific stories of what was going on: women being gang raped by an entire militia, men being forced to watch as their children were killed and their villages burned, the government allowing renegades to cut off food and water supplies to black communities as a method of ethnic cleansing. The only thing I heard from CNN were some oversimplified statements about diplomats and UN ultimatums, as well some vague mentions of "atrocities."