The media has an impactful role in the way people view political issues. Whether it is the issues on the candidate's platforms or political scandals, the media is the main source that many people get their information from. As a college student, this upcoming 2016 presidential election is going to be the first election that I am able to vote in. Many students, including myself, obtain a majority, if not all, of the information they know about politics from the media. The spectrum ranges from articles and television to social media and magazines. This topic is interesting because many people blindly follow the media and forget about bias. The way information is presented can help sway the voter one way or another. I am qualified to write about this topic because I am going to be a voter and currently I am trying to learn as much as I can about all the candidates by using the media. Also, it is important to be unbiased and I believe that because I am aware of the bias in different media companies I am able to view this topic as a third party that is simply looking at all information. I will first analyze two sources talking about the same political scandal and then analyze another source talking about the media's role in politics.

The first source is an online article from CNN explaining Hillary Clinton's email controversy. This article lays out the who, what, when, where, and why about the entire controversy of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. The article explains that rather than using government email addresses she connected to a privately-owned server. Clinton replied by simply saying that it was for convenience and that clearly it wasn't her best choice because of all the controversy. Many emails were released and evidently many were about her schedule and few were classified compared to the thousands that were released. A question many were asking was, "Did she break the rules?" and technically there was no rule against her actions until after she left the State Department. This article attempts to be as unbiased as possible and tries to give an account of the whole situation. The values and interests at stake is the credibility of the Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The author gives an account of what happened and explains that while it was wrong, it was not illegal. Eric Bradner, the author, is a credible source due to his experience in the field. He has covered many political topics such as international trade, fights over labor rights, education reform, and several House and Senate campaigns. He has worked for CNN, a credible news station, for many years now. 

This next source takes a very different interpretation of the same situation. This is where it becomes difficult because CNN is credible and known for being fairly moderate, but can swing a little left, while Fox News tends to swing to the right. The two articles obviously have very different thoughts on the controversy and it is up to the reader to decide which article is giving the facts and which is unbiased, and that can be difficult to do. The article by Fox News depicts the scandal as unprofessional act of negligence to the security to the United States. While the first source says the classified articles were only a small portion, this article highlights there were several dozen private programs, and information that were classified and top secret. Fox News, unlike CNN, highlights legal action that has taken place in similar instances in the past and explains Clinton's fault in the matter. Again, the values at stake are Clinton's reputation and her campaign. Authors Catherine Herridge and Pamela Brown are both qualified journalists who earned degrees from prestigious Ivy League colleges and cover political topics regularly for Fox News.

This final source covers media as a whole and its more broad effects on how viewers see certain issues. This article attacks the issue of political transparency by saying that it both helps and hinders it. Television, for example, is a main topic in this article and explains that it provides openness and accountability while also needing entertainment for views which causes them to show scandals, political strategies, and only show limited time for less entertaining policy issues. This article touches on interesting values such as transparency, democracy, and accountability. The article discusses these values when talking about transparency in Washington and having people know what is going on. This goes along with accountability for political officials and their wrong-doings. Finally, democracy is discussed in the fact of the whole population being able to have access to information and able to spread this information to an even greater domain. Jack M. Balkin is an American legal scholar. He works with the Yale Law School and has degrees from both Harvard and Cambridge University. He is an expert on telecommunications and technology for law and society, while also studying the implications of the internet. He has written several books and he is extremely knowledgeable on this topic as well as a credible source to gain information from. 

This topic is arguable, in that, it makes people question their sources. Many people hear information and automatically believe it. Whether it is read in an article or watched on TV many people just take that information and never check it or challenge it. It is important to check your sources and make sure the information is correct, the author or speaker is credible and knowledgeable on the topic before you believe it. It is evident that for the first two sources there is question on whether Clinton's acts were illegal. The sources are talking about the same topic, but have different interpretations and more research should definitely be done before jumping to conclusion about the legality of the situation. The different sources definitely make me question the bias in many things now. Whether there is an obvious bias seen or not, there is always bias in everything based on the authors or speakers experiences and backgrounds. Now, that may begin to seem trivial; however, it really can affect the way certain issues are displayed. My research question should be revised to address a more prominent problem rather than an explanation of what the media does. 

