In recent years, there has been questions revolving around the credibility of sources and whether or not they are giving every piece of information to the reader/viewer. The American media has encountered many problems including, plagiarism, making profits, and manipulation.
Moreover, many American citizens are beginning to recognize that there are several inaccuracies and bias within the media outlet. These constant inconsistencies from media outlets are making it harder and harder for the average American to maintain an open-mind with issues that involve the United States.
According to Wikipedia, ABC News is the news division of the America Broadcasting Company, owned by the Disney Media NetworKs division of The Walt Disney Company.Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ABC World News Tonight with David Muir; other programs include morning news-talk show Good Morning America, Nightline, Primetime, and 20/20, and Sunday morning political affairs program This Week with George Stephanopoulos. So, with all these shows within their broadcast does a certain bias exist?
According to Allsides, a company that was started to bring justice to American citizens and providing them with the best information possible from media sources claims that ABC News media bias rating is lean left. A “lean left” bias rating is a moderately liberal rating on the political spectrum. Lean left medias tend to show favor for keeping abortion legal, a belief that corporations, if left unregulated, may do harm to workers, society and the environment in the pursuit of profit, and cover stories democratic related. According to AllSides, during the 2008 election, ABC News, along with the other two major broadcast television networks, donated a total of $1,020,816 to the Democratic Party given by 1,160 employees. On the other hand, only 193 donations were made for a total of $142,863 to the Republican Party.
According to an article published by Fox News titled, “ABC News demonstrates ‘left-wing bias’ leading up to midterms” Critics such as Jeffrey McCall, Chris Barron, and Nicholas Fondacarro demonstrate through various examples how ABC News media outlet portrays itself as a liberal media outlet and not a conservative.
According to Fox, during Sunday’s “Good Morning America”, co-anchor Dan harris reviewed how it was even possible for Republicans to even have a chance in midterm elections. Newsbuster analyst for the Media Research Center, Nicholas Fondacaro explains how Tom Llamas went onto the set to hype house races Republicans were struggling in… while Llamas called out struggling Republicans by name for those races, he didn’t call out Democrats struggling in their Senate races. Furthermore, this represents the lean left spectrum of media bias because Llamas is on live television talking badly about Republicans and not Democrats.
Similarly, another example that proves left-wing bias within ABC News is the network’s choice to have former Democratic adviser to Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos as a regular host and commentator. A professor from Depauw University claimed, “ABC decided years ago that it was going a certain direction when it hired George Stephanopoulos to do the work of a traditional journalist, as opposed to being a commentator or analyst.” Therefore, we can assume that ABC News when hiring Stephanopoulos knew it was going to lean heavily on left-wing.
In conclusion, when assessing the bias and credibility of ABC News with American citizens it has been proven that they tend to favor Democrats. From different perspectives, we see that ABC is biased due to not only the information they share on different media platforms, but also from the people that work within the corporation. I agree with Allsides media rating on ABC News.
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