"No offense, that's just how I was raised..."

I admit it: I am a sucker for PerezHilton.com. Who can resist less-than flattering photos of celebrities hilariously defaced via MS Paint?

This is the part where I beg you to summon what little respect you have left for me and read on.

Mario Lavandeira, better known by his pen name: Perez Hilton, has managed to use his blog as a platform for the movement for marriage equality. Perez Hilton recently served as a judge in the Miss USA pageant, and had written the question that was posed to finalist Miss California regarding whether she felt more states should follow Vermont's example by legalizing gay marriage. She never said whether or not more states should legalize gay marriage, as the question asked, but instead stated that she was raised to believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. She qualified her response with a half-hearted "No offense!", though Perez Hilton is openly gay and was certain to be offended by her advocacy of discrimination. Her response actually elicited boos from the audience, perhaps for the first time in pageant history. I personally feel that her response was atrocious, but that is a simple difference of opinion.

PerezHilton.com takes pride in being "Hollywood's Most Hated Web-Site!". By interjecting his own comedic commentary into typical celebrity coverage, 'Perez Hilton' has made his brand a household name. He has been so effective in thrusting this issue into the spotlight of media coverage because his site is already so well known. People want to know his opinion even more than he wants to tell it to them, which is pretty hard to believe. The fact that Perez Hilton wrote the fateful question that Carrie Prejean wasn't smart enough to answer diplomatically made it exponentially more interesting than if someone else had posed the question. His character and his platform made this event as newsworthy as it was.

What is remarkable about this scandal is that PerezHilton.com covered the ensuing spectacle relentlessly, and in doing so seems to have given the campaign for gay marriage serious momentum. I feel that his coverage thrust the issue into the public eye. The media tends to cover entertaining news and scandal- PerezHilton.com specializes in scandal and gossip- and the fact that Mario Lavandeira played such a prominent role in the scandal illustrates the increased influence bloggers have on the media and the shaping of current events. PerezHilton.com almost primarily featured other mentions of Carrie Prejean (Miss California) in the media and featured clips of his own appearances on prominent talk shows. This appears to be an example of a blogger influencing political policy changes. Since the incident and the media blitz following, the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed legislation legalizing gay marriage, the Maine State Senate passed similar legislation, the US House of Representatives passed the Mathew Shepard Act, and Iowa upheld its recent legalization of gay marriage and began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

My point is, the involvement of a blogger made an insensitive comment by a pageant contestant into a scandal. His involvement caused the overwhelming mainstream media coverage of the incident, and that mainstream media coverage caused politicians to speed up processes already in motion in response to public interest.

I find it fascinating that a gossip blogger has come to wield such power over the political discourse. This serves as further proof that the internet and the blogosphere are dramatically revolutionizing the way we consume and make use of information made available to us.

OK, maybe I'm not beyond bias...

Anyone who asserts that the media has a liberal bias needs a good dose of Fox News. It should clear that misconception up in a hurry.

Check this article out: Fox News claims that White House officials, most prominently VP Joe Biden, are inconsistent and now make the same assertions they harshly criticized John McCain for making during the presidential campaign.

I personally find it hard to respect them as a news organization when they've resorted to fabricating their stories. The comparison of screencaps makes it abundantly clear that they recycled footage of Biden criticizing McCain's previous comment. What they portray as Biden agreeing with McCain's statement that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" was actually selected and taken out of its original context, in which Biden quoted McCain as having said that and then vehemently disagreed with its factual accuracy.

Sure doesn't seem Fair and Balanced to me.

Since Fox News doesn't seem too concerned with facts, the investigative journalists over at Media Matters luckily checked them for us. The second part of the article examines discrepancies in the usage of comments made by Austan Goolsbee, a White House economic advisor. On March 15th, Fox included his entire commentary. The following day, they re-used pieces of the same interview to mislead their viewers into thinking that the Obama administration was backpedaling and now agreed with McCain about the strength of our economy.

I find it disturbing that a news organization that is purportedly 'fair and balanced' is so willing to misconstrue events to serve their own ends. They are effectively trashing whatever credibility they may have had- it is one thing to mistakenly distribute unsubstantiated stories, but quite another to deliberately manipulate news footage to convey a message inconsistent with reality. If they want to distribute fiction and pass it off as fact, they should no longer be able to identify themselves as a news agency. A report that is so flagrantly false is something one should expect from the Onion, but they at least admit that they're full of crap.

The professional code of journalists is so closely scrutinized- many news outlets prohibit their staff from making political campaign donations for fear of being accused of a liberal bias in reporting. Any expression of personal opinion in news coverage is widely condemned as part of a greater left-wing media conspiracy to herd unsuspecting Americans over to The Dark Side. These very one-sided accusations have put the media on the defense- no one is ever accused of being conservatively biased, because anyone who would accuse a reporter of such a thing is clearly an agent of the Ideological Left! *cue The Emperor's March*

An attempt to mislead viewers when the facts are so evident to the news agency is a betrayal of the American people. Fox News attacks other media outlets for their supposed bias while they themselves go beyond bias- they lie.

Well, at least the greater right-wing conspiracy is working! Their tactic of demonizing their opponents has made any association with liberalism a taboo, though I doubt this will work for very long. Cracks are beginning to show- because it has become unwise for journalists to imply a conservative bias with a negative connotation, those conservatively biased journalists must have started to feel invincible, because they have gotten careless. To accuse someone of bias is subjective- to catch them in a lie is not debatable. They either told the truth or they didn't, and the proof is in the pudding. Er... footage.

I take comfort in the belief that what goes around comes around.

Media: The Fourth Branch of Government?

Will someone please tell Sarah Palin to go away? Her fifteen minutes are over.

According to a new interview, Sarah Palin claims that the media had some sort of vendetta against her during this most recent presidential campaign. She feels that their coverage and depiction of her was unfair and should not have been tolerated, likening the news media to a branch of government.

At the risk of being written off as a liberal elitist for not siding with everyone's favorite hockey mom, I beg to differ.

Sarah Palin's assertion is that the "unbalanced coverage" somehow threatens democracy. I balk at this suggestion. I would argue that the freedom of the media to say what they wish is essential to democracy. Sarah Palin was the worst offender in tarnishing her own reputation- the majority of the media merely presented her as she was. She made an absolute spectacle of herself at every opportunity. In order to have balanced coverage of her, half of the media would have had to grossly misrepresent events as they occurred. A true threat to democracy is the implication that the media should have been somehow prevented from disseminating factual information.

She alludes to the harm the media caused children- one can only assume that she refers here to her own family and the media's coverage of them. I do agree that close coverage of a candidate's children is intrusive, unnecessary, and irrelevant. I do not feel that this is necessarily a reflection of the media's disdain for Governor Palin, nor is it indicative of a liberal bias in the media. No one accused the media of a liberal bias when unkind remarks regarding Chelsea Clinton's physical appearance were published and openly discussed on talk shows across America. Nor in the case of the media coverage of the shenanigans involving Al Gore's son just prior to the primary campaign season.

What I find more disturbing than her characterization of the media at large as a big, left-wing bully is that she seems to be under the impression that the media is a branch of government. As someone who learned the three branches of government back in elementary school along with the alphabet and the concept of the food chain, I'm concerned that Governor Palin is a few cards short of a full deck here. It is irrefutable that the media has a great deal of influence: American citizens rely on various news outlets for information. Said citizens (hopefully) use this information to make educated decisions when forming stances on political issues, candidates, and voting. While the media has control over what information reaches the general public and in what light it is presented, it cannot do anything beyond that point.

The government, limited by each of the THREE branches' checks and balances on the others, can act. The government can implement legislation to cause actual change, though it is notorious for taking its sweet time in doing so. The distinct difference here is that the media has influence, and government has power. Influence and power are NOT one and the same.

Sarah Palin is giving the media far more credit than it is due. While the majority of the mainstream media (FOX News excluded) let Palin be seen for the bumbling mess that she was, the media coverage of the campaign is not what lost the election for Republicans. They presented what there was to be seen- but they did not tell Americans what to do with that information. Even if they had, the media has no power to control what individual Americans do with that information.

News outlets are privately owned and operated. Where the media is commercially motivated, it is wrong to identify them as part of the American government system. The government is supposedly for the people, by the people. The media is for the people, by the media outlet owners and the interests of their sponsors. While the media can (if they so choose) hold politicians accountable, they cannot implement actual change that affects the lives of all Americans as the government does. Bottom line: The media is not government.

This is fourth grade social science, people. I know we're dealing with Sarah Palin here, but come on!