Day 4

As promised, I listened to some conservative-leaning talk radio today. Actually, it wasn't so much leaning as screaming a conservative bias. I attempted to listen to Rush Limbaugh, but unfortunately you can't listen to his shows or podcasts on his website unless you pay. So, I went with Michael Savage's "The Savage Nation," and I listened to the first segment of his show from yesterday.

"The Savage Nation," November 20, 2013. Michael Savage

SOME QUOTATIONS CONTAIN STRONG LANGUAGE

This source was a 26-minute excerpt from Michael Savage's daily radio talk show. In it, he discussed the most recent recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor for American civilians. He stated his opinions on these recipients and named those whom he would have liked to see receive the award. Savage disagreed with President Obama on who should have received the award and said that he would have given the award to a group of military servicemen killed in action in 2011. Savage gave historical background on the award and included clips of Obama speaking at the awards ceremony, which contained background information on some of the awards recipients. The excerpt contained about four clips of Obama's speech and one quotation from Gloria Steinem. However, Savage punctuated the clips throughout with interjections of his opinions on the president's words. It is difficult to determine the model of media represented here. Although his one-sided view of the issue may represent propaganda, I am more inclined to call this excerpt an example of profit-seeking media because Savage is paid to express these views on national radio. There is a strong conservative bias in this excerpt. Savage speaks very strongly against liberals, calling Obama a "left-wing fanatic" and referring to "left-wing radical social engineers." He favors traditional family values, speaking out against Gloria Steinem's feminist ideas and what he sees as the feminization of boys through the TV show Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. He also notes that there were few straight, white, Christian males on the list of awards recipients. Michael Savage uses this source to express his very conservative views; he is not an objective observer.

I thought this source was shockingly aggressive. It was as biased as the Rolling Stone article I read a few days ago, but many of Savage's comments were insulting or outright offensive; for instance, he calls Obama "a psychopath" in addition to "a left-wing fanatic" and accusing him of having a "radical Leninist agenda." He used terms that could be construed as racist, referring to terrorist threats as "fifteenth-century raghead throwbacks" and "prevalent Islamic threats," and speaking of "black thugs...targeting people of other races." Most offensively, he says of feminist leader Gloria Steinem, "She is a dirty, low-down slut, she's a filthy slut," apparently because he believes "she destroyed womanhood in America." I take issue with Savage's delivery of his opinions not only because he delivers them angrily and insultingly, but because he does not explain why he believes his opinions are correct or provide any evidence to back them up. He simply rages about all the aspects of American society he believes are harmful, relying more on bluster than on fact. In addition, he was very repetitive, complaining again and again about the Medal of Freedom recipients and whom the award should have gone to; however, this can probably be partially attributed to the radio format, in which hosts must compensate for listeners tuning it at different times. I did appreciate, however, that he read the names of the deceased servicemen at the end of the segment. I feel that many Americans share Savage's views, though possibly to a lesser extent; he could probably be more persuasive if he presented his opinions in a more rational way. This source is highly narrowcasted towards those with strong conservative views. It presents only a narrow viewpoint of current events and is not very informative - it is certainly not an adequate source for those wishing to become more informed about current events and American government. For me, it was more of a learning experience about different opinions in America.

So far I've read a couple of sources that attack or implicitly attack conservatives and one that attacks liberals. I find myself wondering why we can't all just get along!