Period 1
11-27-12
Media Paper: The Fiscal Cliff The media today gives us Americans access to any type of information we are curious about, but there are faults. Some journalists and reporters of large broadcast networks may have an opinion of their own that they integrate into a story or report, this is called bias. Bias in the current problem involving the fiscal cliff will be targeted and compared from different sources. The fiscal cliff is a combination of expiring tax provisions and budget cuts, which begin to take effect on January 1st of the New Year. Without a compromise between the President, and the Congressional leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties, the fiscal cliff is impossible to avoid. President Obama wants to keep the same tax cut for the middle and low class Americans while returning taxation to the higher class Americans to a higher rate. Information was taken from the following three major sources of information, and analyzed for presence of bias. The three major political news sources used for research were CNN, C-SPAN, and NBC. While sifting through the C-SPAN website and reading about the fiscal cliff, I felt a positive perspective was being given towards President Obama and the progress made towards coming to a compromise. In the article, a comment was made that the Congressional meeting on Friday November 126th was a very productive one, and also stated that soon the government would be “ready to put revenue on the table”. This was but only an early view of progress, C-SPAN forgot to include that since that meeting, there has been no contact between the Congressional leaders and the President regarding the issue at hand. When researching about the fiscal cliff on the CNN website, a somewhat negative tone regarding Obama’s lack to resolve avoiding the fiscal cliff was present. The author Tom Cohen made it very clear that Obama needs to stop scheduling meetings with small business leaders, and focus on avoiding the coming to a compromise by the New Year deadline. Chen stated in his article, “Obama needs to get to the point and sit down at the table to face this dilemma”, expressing clear frustration with the apparent procrastination of the President on resolving this issue. It is clear that there is bias against Obama present in Cohen’s article on CNN. In the last source used for research, NBC, there was also a negative tone towards President Obama putting off the issue of the fiscal cliff. Chuck Todd, the author, greatly expressed the grief and chaos involved with Obama and his administration to come to a compromise. He also made a point that with an upcoming deadline, the issue becomes more and more important to solve, and greater efforts are starting to show, as we get closer to the New Year. Although this shouldn’t be true when it comes to our government handling issues, the importance of it has magnified with pressure, putting it under the microscope more and more each day the deadline gets closer. Chuck stated in his article that “Obama and his team are running in circles as the deadline gets closer” shows his concern on the ability of the administration to get things done under pressure. A little bit of bias against Obama is present in this article. When reviewing the