The media is everywhere. Television, radio, newspapers, and hundreds of other sources allow all people to be aware of the situations that surround their community and country. By covering topics from sports to politics to weather, the media is in control of the information people believe is happening around them. Yet there is a flaw in the system: false or misconstrued news reports to help support the news provider’s wallets and views. A prime example of this was Deflategate, the National Football League’s case against the New England Patriots and Tom Brady for using under-deflated footballs in the AFC Championship in January 2015. False news reports were released when not all the facts were gathered, creating the public opinion that Tom Brady was guilty when there were no facts to back the claim. The frightening part of this story is that the false reporting was done by an extremely liable source, ESPN. This proved that even the best news stations have flaws that hide the true information from the public, even worldwide news sources like CNN and Fox News. The medias’ power has taken advantage of the innocent public view of all news stories, and must be minimized in order to maintain the trust that viewers have in powerful news sources. 

In the past two years, the false nature of the media has been exposed on a natural scale by poor reporting and opinionated stories on numerous topics. During much of 2015 and some of 2016, Tom Brady and Deflategate dominated sports news with little to no change in advancements daily. The NFL wanted to suspend Tom Brady four games for his part in the minor deflation of footballs in the first half of the conference championship game. Throughout the year and a half this scandal took place, false reports on social media and news channels put a poor spotlight on Brady. Rumors of ball boys poor handling of the balls to Tom Brady “destroying” his cell phone spread through news sources like wildfire. Although this story dominated news around the country, the presidential election was the main news story for months, focusing around Republican wildcard Donald Trump. News stations seemed to take sides on the issues, reporting stories that supported one candidate yet hurt the chances of the other. Many people were blown away by the oblivious nature in which they reported on certain candidates, making them question the legitimacy of the news stations they have believed were loyal for so long. 

Watching football is America’s favorite pastime, capturing the attention of millions for four straight months while keeping them anticipating the start of the season during the eight-month offseason. After the Deflategate situation was reported, it dominated the media for months, and continued to be reported until nearly eighteen months later. During that time, false facts and poor worded social media posts created an untrue representation of the situation. Beginning with Chris Mortensen’s report of the false deflation of the balls, posting on twitter that the balls were under-deflated 2 pounds, when in reality it was only 2 psi. “They should have insisted on a clarification immediately upon learning the 2 PSI detail was inaccurate. And after Mortensen deleted the related tweet, they should have publicly addressed that action and how it affected ESPN’s stance on the veracity of the story” (Lack of Transparency). ESPN defended Mortensen on the issue, downplaying the severity of the damage done by the tweet. The tweet made the issue the top story for days on sports televisions and national news channels. The problem with this tweet was that it immediately gave New England a guilty look after a history of wrongdoing. Unfortunately, the poor reporting continued. An Outside the Lines reporter reported that locker room attendant Jim McNally tried to introduce an unidentified ball into the game. “To many in New England, Naqi’s story was another ESPN attempt to make the Patriots look complicit in Deflategate, though she was careful in her story to only connect McNally to the larger investigation, not his alleged action” (Lack of Transparency). Both reports wrongfully put the Patriots in a difficult situation because every non-New England fan believed they were guilty based on the false facts presented. False facts. The media dealt with this situation horribly, they didn’t check their facts before releasing them to the public. Their mistakes had an effect on the dealing of Deflategate eighteen months later, which is unfortunate to say the least.

There were more problems with the initial reporting of this story. ESPN first reported that linebacker D’Quell Jackson brought the ball over to the sideline claiming that it was under-deflated after an interception. ESPN later claimed that Jackson didn’t directly say that, which confused many viewers following the situation (ESPN Fumbles Deflategate Reporting). Rumors have a large part in this scenario, but it still seems like ESPN didn’t fact check and assumed the information they received was true. This is unfair to the Patriots, who are directly impacted by these mistakes, but also viewers watching because they were given false information and harming the trust many have in the media. Viewers didn’t know what to believe due to the lack of integrity of the media, it’s unfortunate that this isn’t only in sports media. 

Although many people follow sports and specific franchises, there are many people that follow other types of news, especially politics. Some news stations have been blamed for biased favoring certain political parties by covering and not covering certain news stories. Many viewers of national news channels that cover political news were blind to the biased stories, mainly because they favored their side of the political spectrum. That is until the 2016 election. Underdog Donald Trump made a furious push to gain the Republican nomination to face off with favored Presidential Contender Democrat Hillary Clinton. Many stations favored certain parties during the road to the Presidential Election. Many viewers realized the biased in certain news sources throughout this process, and many saw how biased the news was towards their own political party. According to Pew Research Center, almost half of people that said they held consistent Conservative viewpoints relied on Fox News as their source for political news. This is much higher than any other news source studied, local radio coming in next with 11% of consistent Conservatives relying on them for political news. People who were mostly or consistently Conservative were relied on by 29% on average than the next best option. On the other side of the spectrum, consistently liberal viewers mainly watched CNN, but by a slim margin of 2%. “CNN is named by just 20% of those with mostly liberal views, but still tops their list, followed by local television (11%) and NPR (9%)” (Pew Research Center). The discrepancies is surprising, but is understandable by how obviously biased these news stations are. The most surprising aspect of the beginning of this article was the low amount of liberals that watched CNN as their main news source, as CNN is understood to be extremely liberal in what they report. The statistics on Fox News is incredible, as conservative’s watch Fox News in the masses. All these statistics prove is that many people of the same political party follow the same news sources, making it obvious that these sources are reporting news that their viewers enjoy watching and agree with. 

As stated previously, the media has the power to control what facts are released and not released to the public. The power isn’t noticed much by viewers, but people have seemed to realize the power more and more due to recent media coverage of political events. “In general, the survey finds that there is more trust than distrust of news sources. But there are substantial differences in trust and distrust across the ideological spectrum” (Pew Research Center). Although more people trust than distrust the media, a majority of people either distrust the media or do not trust and/or distrust the media. This is disturbing because that means many people do not trust the national news sources that main job is to report the news with integrity. Another interesting statistical discovery is that many people of certain political beliefs trust certain news sources over others. “About two-thirds of those with mostly liberal political values trust CNN (66%)” (Pew Research Center). This connects with the belief of many that CNN favors liberal viewpoints, resulting in gaining the trust of the viewers that support liberal-favored stories. On the other side of politics, conservatives favor a different news source: Fox News. “Conservatives, on the other hand, demonstrate strong allegiance to Fox News. Among those with mostly conservative values, Fox is the only source trusted by a majority (72%). And among those who are consistently conservative, nearly nine-in-ten (88%) trust it as a source — by far the highest level of trust by any ideological group of any single source” (Pew Research Center). These percentages are absurd. Conservatives strongly believe that Fox News isn’t biased and only reports true news stories. Another statistic that jumps out in this article is that 88% of consistent liberal’s distrust Fox News. As Fox News attracts conservatives, it pushes away liberals by the articles they report and the fashion they report them in. This information furthers the claim that the media reports to favor certain political parties by reporting stories that connect with their viewer’s beliefs, not to report what is true and correct. 

Another primary point of this argument is the reporters need for a good story. A reporter makes a living off telling interesting stories and getting recognized for reporting them well. This is where the main problem of false news stories and bias comes in: the stage in-between hearing the story and retelling the story. Reporters need an interesting story, and are known to try to make uninteresting stories seem intriguing. Unfortunately, reporters don’t just change their tone of voice to make a story interesting, they focus on certain parts and leave key facts untold. “The press doesn’t favor certain candidates because it’s engaged in a vast conspiracy, according to the report. It’s a lot simpler: reporters like a good story. It’s what their business is based on” (PBS). This relates directly with Donald Trump’s candidacy, focusing the media on him and steering the spotlight away from the competitor. Donald Trump was such an underdog and unexpected candidate that the media turned all its focus onto him and every advancement in his campaign. “Ultimately, the report attributed Trump’s candidacy in part to the coverage. ‘He might have won the Republican nomination in any case, given the confluence of factors working in his favor,’ it said. ‘But one of his assets, certainly, was his press advantage.’” (PBS) The press has a lot to do with the outcome of elections because they report the news on each candidate, which form their opinions on them. The power of the media is unbelievably strong, and Trump used this power to pull one of the biggest upsets in Presidential Election history. It was impossible to miss the amount of media coverage Trump was receiving through his campaign, and the tremendous amount of coverage taken away from competitor Hillary Clinton. Some liberal stations just focused on the poor qualities of Trump, while others focused on the positive things. No matter if the comments were positive or negative, the people knew Donald Trump well and didn’t know Hillary Clinton to be anyone but a liar. That is what led to the upset Trump pulled over Hillary, the unfair media coverage of Trump over his opponent. Disappointingly, this had a tremendous impact on the election and may have had a different outcome if both parties got equal recognition.

It’s easy to see how this all connects: the media can and will play us as fools for their well-being. There is proof of this everywhere from sports media to coverage of the Presidential Election. Biased and false media can come in many forms, some more obvious others. Chris Mortensen over reacted the amount of air taken from the footballs by a large amount, and not apologizing for the mistake but continuing to point the finger elsewhere. His mistakes tainted the legacy for the Patriots and started a wildfire of hatred towards the Patriots, along with other reports that claimed the ball boy was responsible for introducing false balls into the game. This was untrue of course, as it was the referee that was responsible for all the wrongdoing. The scary thing is this is one sports story. We’ve seen biased media against blacks and foreigners in the sports world by not giving them enough credit as white athletes. Yet sports is just one category, there are many more extremely followed news topics, like politics, that have taken advantage of viewers for years. As statistics show, people are attracted to certain news stations based on their place on the political spectrum. News stories have been reported to attract a specific audience, ruining the integrity of politics by favoring one candidate and not giving fair air-time to the opposing candidate. Fox News and CNN are two top news sources, and both are blamed for favoring certain candidates by the stories they report and the manner in which they report them. The problem with both of these stories is the power the media has and how they abuse that power on a daily basis. Although many don’t realize it, the media is biased in almost every sense, and in their defense it’s hard not to. But the manner in which they report stories on a daily basis, making the same mistakes numerous times needs to be noted. The medias’ job is to be honest to the public and report news truthfully with no biased to swing their opinions, allowing them to decide for themselves how they should feel. As of now that’s not the case, and there seems to be no stopping the media from continuing to take advantage of its viewers. 
