The way conservative news outlets like Breitbart and FOX News do is an insult to journalism because they create news, not report it. Most of the time, they create things that harm others when they do not deserve negative exposure.
For example, what James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles did to ACRON, a group that just wanted to help people in poverty, was out of sheer spite. What do they gain from defaming ACORN? Other than being a joke within the journalism community and getting a few lawsuits. Although ACORN has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by three separate independent investigations, the reputation they left behind after being shut done was as a place that aid in illegal activity and not a place that helps those who suffer from structural classism get ahead. It is almost as if O'Keefe and Giles wanted ACORN to be shut down. FOX News has also been caught creating news and hyper editing clips to make people seem as if they're talking about something they are not. It happened with Shirley Sherrod, then Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture. Fox News edited a speech she was hosting to make it sound as if she would not help a white farmer because of being white. The reality of the story was that she ended up helping the farmer keep his land and this was a learning experience for her when she first joined the department. Sherrod ended up losing her job, and FOX News still gets to sit pretty and frame people in a defaming nature. What worries me, however, is that even after these two hoaxes have been proved incorrect, FOX News and Breitbart are still allowed to mass distribute information and not one bats an eye other than other journalists and people keeping tabs on these publications. There should be parameters set in place that once a mainstream news publication does something like this -- literally create news and distribute false information -- that they get a punishment greater than slap on the wrist. I feel that mainstream media gets to get away with things to a point that they can mold reality to extremes and that is not a safe thing, for anyone. Most people in the U.S. do not have access to a level of education that allows them to know how to criticize the news, and most journalists in many places know and understand this. Places like FOX News use this to their advantage and absorb the minds of their viewers until they create a cult-like following. I've said it many times and I'll keep saying it: the U.S. practices subtle propaganda techniques and Donal Trump's administration is just making this more evident, more dangerous, and making overt use of it.
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AuthorHi! I'm Isabella Grullon. I am a junior journalism major at Ithaca College from the Dominican Republic and Colombia.
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