It has become increasingly clear to most Americans that the mainstream media is courting the current White House with the intensity of a 17-year-old boy. As I flip through the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC, it becomes painfully clear that there is an agenda they want to see pushed. When the president does this– elation. When the president does not– criticism. That is not news, that is a drama filled episode of HBO’s Big Love.

Coming from a traditional communications background, I am disappointed and deeply saddened at the loss of objectivity and standards within the news today. As an amateur historian, I am embarassed that the memory of men like Franklin and Jefferson are made a mockery by people like Matthews and Olbermann. Benjamin Franklin, who owned and published a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, once said that “a newspaper in every home” was the “principle support of…morality” in civic life. Unfortunately, the current news structure has become less about education and knowledge and more about persuasion and opinion. In today’s era of big media, there unfortunately is another quote from Franklin that comes to mind, “When truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.” 50 years ago the media was there to tell the nation what the people thought. Today, the media exists to tell the nation what to think.

Any sane individual can clearly delineate the lines drawn in the sand. Victor Davis Hanson has done an excellent job recapping the media’s treatment of both Bush and Obama in a piece for The Corner. Specifically, Hanson noted the lack of “substantive criticism of Obama’s flips on renditions, military tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Iraq..” and the “Obama plan to run up more red ink in a year than Bush did in eight.” Apparently, an objective stance on the growth and over-reach of government is less important than ensuring the masses accept their fate and relinquish decision making in an appropriately jovial fashion.

In addition, Pew Research notes that this Administration has received an extraordinary amount of positive press, almost double that of Bill Clinton and George Bush. Their study has found that positive stories about this Administration have outweighed negative by two-to-one (42% vs. 20%) while 38% of stories have been neutral or mixed.

It seems objectivity is not only lost by those who produce the news, subjectivity is quickly overtaking those who consume it: According to the new poll out by Gallup, nearly half of Democrats (45%) say the media have done an excellent or good job as a watchdog of the Democratic Obama administration, compared with 29% of independents and 30% of Republicans. You can read the whole article here: Click to Read the Full Article

There are many speculating on why the mainstream media favors this Administration and why limited government never gets a fair shake, leave your thoughts in the comments and let me know what your take is. Me: I believe the news is there to inform, not influence. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.” This country was built on the ingenuity of free men and will continue to remain so only with the input of an educated, informed populace.

Regardless of our political affiliation, for now the writing remains on the wall; or in this case, the heart shaped eyes and dropping jaw remain on Chris Matthews:

You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.

WATCH THE FULL CLIP HERE

Times, they are a changing. With the rise of blogs and social media, I hope we will fulfill the wishes of both Franklin and Jefferson in creating an educated, informed populace with the knowledge and know-how to steer this country from the bottom-up. Until then, I’ll take my news with a grain of salt…and a margarita.