I was watching television the other day with a friend of mine (who is a good guy, but unfortunately for me is about as liberal as they get), and as he was flipping through the stations, he came to stop on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show (for those who haven’t heard of the show, it’s about as liberal as a Barbara Streisand, Rosie O’Donnell and Oprah Winfrey orgy).While I do not agree with anything the show’s host, Jon Stewart or anyone else on the show has to say politically, they do occasionally have some rather funny non-political skits, so I decided to stick around and watch. It just so happens that the first “story” that they reported was on one of President Bush’s speeches where he apparently fumbled around with his words. I did not have the opportunity to see the entire speech, just the portions that they showed on the show, which I’m sure were taken out of context. After my friend’s laughter died down, he turned to me and said “Ha! You’re a Republican!” Which I guess was supposed to be an insult, but rest assured I took no offense, since I wasn’t the one relying on Jon Stewart as a credible news source. Besides, I know that it takes more than just being a sharp speaker to be a great leader. It’s the policies behind the speaker and the means of implementing those policies that makes a leader great.
While The Daily Show may be a more extreme example of how the liberal media is withering away the thought processes of Americans, people, such as my friend, still use information from that show and other liberal media sources in forming opinions. Even when the media source is “credible”, many Americans simply take the reporter’s opinion as fact, almost never stopping to think about what was just reported to them.
Unfortunately, the conservative (or at least balanced) media outlets Americans have to choose from, are few and far between. The ones that do exist typically deal with events on a national/global scale rather than on a local scale. In modern America, people tend to be too busy to get their news from more than one source, so they watch/read the typically liberal news that gives them local content as well as some national content.
This could spell trouble for conservatives over the next year. As we get closer to election day, where will Americans be getting their news, and more importantly, who will be forming their opinions? One can only hope that they will be getting their news from more reliable sources than The Daily Show.
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