Topic for debate...

Are the mainstream television news media biased?
 
My position is that the mainstream news media, such as CNN, Fox News, NBC, and others are all biased, and some more than others. It also seems that the majority of Americans also don't trust the mainstream media since each network is trusted by less than 50% of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are many ways in which the mainstream media is biased. One way they are biased is when it comes to the pundits they allow on their show. Anderson Cooper on CNN tends to have a panel where there is only 1 Republican and about 5 Democrats. Fox News show The Five always has 4 Republicans and only one Democrat on the panel. Having this much of a mismatch in a panel, of course I would expect the reporting to be heavily slanted towards the majority side on the show. Perhaps if each political pundit were to make their political affiliation known, then things would be more transparent.

Another way the networks are biased is in terms of what the stories that they cover. Some times CNN doesn't cover a story but Fox News covers it. For instance, when there were a lot of BLM protests earlier this year, CNN focused mostly on "peaceful" protestors and tried to make that the narrative. Meanwhile, Fox News was focusing on the more non-peaceful aspects, including siding with law enforcement more. Other stories I can think of that showed an obvious bias was the way the mainstream media (except Fox News) covered the Nicholas Sandmann, which was the White teen being shown with wearing a MAGA hat and standing in front of a Native American. Most of the Left/left-leaning news networks concluded before the facts that Nicholas Sandmann was somehow an aggressor and expressing some form of racism. But later on as more video came out, it showed Nicholas Sandmann and his group having racial insults hurled at them, and while Nick is standing there he was approached by a Native American. I can think of other stories, like the coverage on Justice Kavanaugh when he was being vetted by the Senate, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Now eventhough I see all of the major news networks as being biased, but I would not tell anyone to not watch them. I will say that if you're looking for fair-and-balanced coverage that not one news network can offer that. The closest you can get to that is by getting your news from MULTIPLE sources, and from both sides of the political spectrum. I watch Fox News and CNN.