Presses, Democracy, and Political Parallelism

As we discussed presses and democracy in class this past week, a thought occurred to me – are we, as the readers of media, bringing upon ourselves the corruption of truth that it presents?  When we read the news, we expect to receive reality.  We expect the journalists to tell us what is actually going on in the world.  We must, however, also factor in what the desire.  Due to human imperfection or unrealistic thoughts of a perfect world, we want the media to tell us what we want to hear.  We want to read stories with the extra frilly embellishments that give us that extra sense of reality, even if it isn’t actually there.  Therefore, when we receive realism, not necessarily reality, do we have the right to criticize the media? Or, did we give the media the right to give us that decorated story?

Our class also discussed the so-called issue of growing political parallelism in the United States.  I, however, do not see political parallelism as a problem.  Political parallelism is when a reporter reports from an obvious point of view and they state their point of view.  For more information on the definition of political parallelism, refer to http://www.parallelism.org/.  Some would argue that as political parallelism arises in society, our ability to form our own opinions will diminish as we simply adopt the opinions of the writers that we read.  To this, I would say that this is an insulting point of view.  I believe that we, as an American people, are generally intelligent enough to recognize that, whether we like it or not, there will be a bias in everything we read.  Political parallelism will simply make these biases more blatant so that we no longer have to try to convince ourselves that there is no bias or determine what that bias is.  Political parallelism will open our eyes to several different viewpoints, allow us to easily compare multiple perspectives, and permit even more creativity in our writings. 

In the article on http://www.hkja.org.hk/site/Host/hkja/UserFiles/File/journalist/journalist2007nov/5-6.pdf, political parallelism in China, where it is very strong, is discussed.  It is said that some of the journalists “positioned themselves as protector of local interests and based their deeds on professionalism and neutrality.”  If political parallelism allows journalists to protect local interests as they deem necessary, then what is the problem with its’ growth?