Post 7 - Underground Reporters

(Opinion Piece)

Write On! How Putting Pen to Paper Can Keep You Sharp
    With as much as is going on in the world and the numerous ways we can interpret and have opinions on events, it is quite astonishing that we only seem to see the most political, the most polarizing, and the most extremist views. Why is that? 
Well, we've discussed a lot of this in class during both of the EOTO presentations - News media is all largely owned by the same companies. Since each of these companies tend to lean one way or another they are going to give whatever perspective is the majority for their audience so that they can continue making money. Polarization also works in favor of politicians. News becomes the most polarized around election seasons. It's easy to look at 2020 as an extremely chaotic year, however, there wasn't much going on in 2020 that isn't normally going on with the exception of a pandemic. 2020 just happened to be an election year so it was the job of media on each side to villainize the other side and sway people to their side. Since these are the views that are most accessible and easiest to view, they are the view that are consumed and viralized. Unfortunately, as a result, a lot of reporters and journalist that dont fall within the extremist realm are lost to the mainstream.
    This is not to say that these views are less important or less valid. Contrarily, these tend to be the most reasonable views in my opinion and tend to offer less polarizing points and more realistic less-goal-oriented opinions. While certain pieces tend to sway one way or another, sites like AntiWar tend not to have a specific party affiliated perspective across the board. They are more wholistic to me.
    American media also has the tendency to narrow our focus to things that bolster American patriotism. As a result, a lot of the negative things we do or things we do that would paint America in a bad image are ignored or quickly pushed out of frontline news so that they don't hit the vitality of the news big media would rather be pushing. 

It is a dangerous and harmful cycle. 

Because of it, we, as a society, are largely ignorant of the things we are not actively looking for. We miss a lot of important national and international news that are important when it comes to forming political opinions. 

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