Short Writing Assignment #3

My mainstream media source was CNN.com; my two blogs were Think Progress (http://thinkprogress.org/index.php), and Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/). The main thing I noticed between the blogs and CNN.com was there was a considerable difference in political coverage. Bloggers on Daily Kos were extremely opinionated, unlike CNN.com, which kept it unbiased. CNN.com presented viewers with facts and a story, that’s it. Bloggers on Daily Kos presented viewers with a bias, opinionated, name calling story. However, Think Progress was not nearly as opinionated as Daily Kos. Think Progress was more like CNN.com than a blog. The stories covered were issues that had huge impacts on America, but the bloggers presented the facts without much bias. One of the biggest differences that I found was CNN's coverage and Daily Kos coverage of the strategy change that is going to take place in Iraq. Both agree that the change in Iraq is a strategy used to sway the upcoming elections; however, the blog was far more critical. Daily Kos said changes were being made because President Bush has finally come to the conclusion that his plan for Iraq was simply a failure. While CNN.com said that the president realized that having a democratic Iraq was not possible; obviously CNN.com was not near as harsh. Also, I followed both CNN.com and the blogs coverage of the newly signed military commission act. CNN.com presented the facts to the public, while Daily Kos referred to Bush and the Republicans as fascist. When comparing stories that were covered on CNN.com to posts on Think Progress I noticed they were relatively the same. Both focused on the current war in Iraq, and both addressed the issue of Iraq being another Vietnam War. They both covered the story, but bloggers on Think Progress were not bias. That shocked me, because most of the time political blogs are bias, but Think Progress is not extremely bias, not like other political blogs. The way blogs cover news and the way reliable media sources cover news is quite different. Bloggers have no problem presenting their bias to the public. However, I did find some blogs that were not bias, therefore, I have come to the conclusion that not every political blog is bias, but the majority of them are. On the other hand, reliable media sources like CNN.com keep it clean; they present the facts without all the mudslinging and name-calling. When comparing the stories that CNN.com covered and stories that the blogs covered, I did not really notice a change in story coverage. They both seemed to cover the same stories, the only difference was the Daily Kos was extremely bias and very opinionated, Think Progress was not as biased, they presented more facts than opinions, and CNN.com was neither bias nor opinionated. CNN.com definitely fulfilled the role of media as a signaler. They presented the public with the facts, they kept us informed and up to date on the issues at hand, and they also presented all of this information to us without a bias opinion. They also fulfilled the role of media as watchdog. They dig up facts and they relay those facts to the public. The most obvious example of media as a watchdog would be the coverage of the controversy surrounding Mark Foley. They dug up facts on Foley and they made it a public matter when they released stories that addressed wrong doings that Foley had committed. However, I do believe that they play a more efficient role as media as a signaler rather then as a watchdog. The blogs on the other hand definitely played the role of media as a public representative. Bloggers are writing these blogs to inform the public, but at the same time, they are letting their bias play into their writing. The main difference that was extremely prominent throughout this whole process was the bias opinions, because if the blogs were not bias then they would basically be the same as a traditional online news source, the only difference would be they are not getting paid to post their blogs.