News Analysis: Helping or Hurting?

By: Pat Tierney

Today the hot topic on any news station is the much contested presidential race. The news media was left stumped on Friday morning with the surprising announcement of Sen. John McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin. During the morning of August 29th the media was sent scrambling, trying to cover this surprise pick of the relatively unknown governor.

Shortly after the announcement however, the media was already on top of the new candidate for vice president, trying to turn up as much information about her that they could. Immediately, the day's headlines began shouting the Senator’s pick. But as a few hours passed, news sources started to post analysis of the possible Vice President.

This analysis by news sources brings me to my question of whether or not analysis really provides fair and just reporting. NBC news ran a whole section of analysis on the new candidate, showing both sides of the coin, showing her controversy but also what she potentially could bring to the table. To be fair, the section on their web site was indeed labeled analysis, but in a society that often times gives unjustified credibility to the media, is it responsible for them to tell the consumer why this is a good or bad thing?

On one hand, it seems as if the days of just reporting the facts are over, and whatever happened to the consumer making up his or her own mind? While on the other, as a voting American, it can be a pretty useful guide to try and have all this information broken down, in an easy to ingest format.

So in the end is analysis by news agencies responsible for the public, or is it the news agencies telling the consumers what to think? There are some facts, now I’ll let you decide.