An Example of Media Non-Bias

Sometimes bias in the news and media is so apparent it’s a slap in the face.  I’m always saddened when no one else seems to notice.  I mean...wow sometimes....

The other day we were watching the news and there were two back to back items that made me shake my head.  Let me say this first.  The Railroad is something that has been falling behind in the USA.  A very large portion of the world utilize this amazing form of transportation and moving freight, because the sheer amount it can carry makes it extremely viable.


But as with most things in the US, we’ve let it go to shit.  Where China and Europe are developing amazing cross country high speed trains which, in some cases are already in use, we here in the US have let our tracks go to hell, and haven’t seen a high speed train except for local traffic in some time.

And the fact is, media is not helping.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw the news report.  A train had derailed, it had been the third in a very short amount of time.  This one in particular caused a HUGE fireball and explosion that were great video points on the news.

Instead of reassuring the public on how safe the rails really are, despite this fluke of accidents, or talking about how if we reinvested money into the infrastructure we could have an amazing rail system that would revolutionize this industry, the news focused on the horror.  They pointed out a statistic of how many rails exist within our communities nation wide.  They even used words like, “scary” at that statistic....

So, after scaring the public over this ‘menace’ they moved on to the next story.  I instantly got a smile, as they started talking about yet another cruise ship fire.  I was ready to see them put up the statistics about how dangerous the cruise industry is.

But, instead, they went in to stats about how safe the cruise industry is, and why everyone should go get on a cruise ship right now.

I blinked at the screen.  So many millions of cruises have sailed without incident since they rash of bad things started in 2003, and only 50 some odd people had died.

So, the cruise industry, which pays tons of advertising money to networks is completely safe, no matter how many fires they have, or how they get stranded at sea for so long while the CEO of the company goes to a basketball game....  And the train industry, something that helped built the US, something that is put to amazing use in other countries, something that you NEVER see a commercial for, is the devil in our back yard waiting to get our kids when we aren’t looking?  Really?

Anyways, that’s just something I noticed while watching our wonderful news media here in the US.  Luckily they say before hand that they have no bias one way or another, else I’d say their actions speak for themselves....