BIAS

In my opinion, confirmation bias is everywhere.  I tend to see it the most when I watch the news covering the presidential race.  Democratic party supporters tend gravitate towards CNN and supporters of the Republican party tend to watch Fox News.  With Fox News, the reason I stopped watching was because in any situation that came up, the reporters painted a picture of the Democratic party as a bunch of heathens that ran this country into the ground for the past eight years and really being overly critical of the president's performance since 2009.  All the while, the Republican party has been nothing short of disrespectful and uncompromising in terms of working with the president on policies affecting the American people and foreign nations

I focus more on CNN and I see it when they have discussion panels on the candidates or when they interview supporters of either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.  Just this morning two reporters interviewed a Clinton supporter, her campaign manager and the reporters were discussing the upcoming debate later on today in New York.  All the while, the reporters were baiting the Clinton supporter by showing aerial views of the monstrous crowds gathering for a Bernie Sanders rally held earlier this week.  The reporter said the size of the crowd was around the figures of 27,000 people.  Clinton's campaign manager quickly dismissed that the amount of people in attendance at Sen. Sanders rally was that high.  He even said that is was about a third of that number and the large crowds do not matter because Hillary is beating Sanders when it comes to the popular vote and that he is trailing by double digits in New York.  To me, the reporters were stirring the pot because they knew that he wasn't going for the bait and he also played down the notion of Bernie Sanders edging out Hillary Clinton in New York.  To viewers, it seems as though the Clinton campaign wants to send the message that Bernie is losing and she pretty much got the nomination in the bag when the Sanders campaign clearly shows that their candidate is gaining momentum and he's not out of the fight yet. 

I looked back at my code sheet for news story 3 because I covered CNN.  I looked backed at the title of 25 stories and I did not see one positive news article on a Republican candidate outside of who's leading in the polls.  I read about Donald Trump and Ted Cruz battle taking jabs at each other's spouse, Ted Cruz alleged love affair with different women, or Donald Trump's 3 different positions on abortion in 3 hours.  CNN will focus on the negative with Republican candidates just like Fox News is critical of Democratic candidates. 

Unfortunately, confirmation bias will never deter viewers from watching the news or reading articles because the media has been very good at disguising it most of the time.  People want to hear the controversial stories therefore the ratings increase causing a never ending cycle of the same political course we've been seeing over the past 10-12years.