A lot to talk about this week

Occupy Wall Street. I relish the opportunity to talk about something so hyper relevant, especially with the protests making their way to Phoenix over the weekend, and ending in the arrests of several Phoenix residents, including some of my classmates at ASU. It's a fascinatingly polarizing topic that makes a lot of strong opinions spurn up.

On to the actual topic: It feels odd to me that we're putting Current and MSNBC on the same scale in this discussion. I feel like Current openly displays it's bias. I mean, it hired Olbermann as it's lead news director, and did it after MSNBC cast him off after nearly a year of him openly displaying his liberal bias. Current is doing nothing to hide it's bias, so it makes perfect sense that Olbermann and other people on the network would be marking for the Occupy protests.

What makes me more angry is that MSNBC is behaving in the a similar way. Not only are they letting Olbermann dictate how they are reporting Occupy Wallstreet, they are ruining all their good graces they gained by cutting ties with Keith by continuing to pursue stories in a way that can be mistaken for a liberal agenda. Are Republicans excused for pushing the narrative that Occupy Wallstreet isn't a story so much as it's a bunch of misinformed rich people complaining and that MSNBC and their ilk are just marking for liberals by covering it? No, but MSNBC has been taking jabs from Republicans long enough to know how they're going to attack and how they're going to try to force the narrative. If nothing else, there's some smack of liberal pandering just by pursuing something that they know is essentially throwing a raw T-bone to the Republican attack dogs.

In the end, I think it's impossible to avoid promoting an agenda in the mainstream news. You report a certain way which leads to gaining a certain viewer set the expects you to report a certain way. In that sense, I absolutely believe that MSNBC is marking towards liberals in their coverage of Occupy Wall Street.

This brings me to my next point: Competition among cable news outlet is harmful for the quality of journalism these organizations produce. Because so much of their coverage has to be custom fitted to the audience that flocks to them, major news outlets like MSNBC and Fox can fall victim to bias sneaking into their coverage because it fills a need that the people watching their programs want. Instead of focusing on telling the story with the truth as the main idea, they can end up reporting biased ideas for the sake of ratings. This can strangle all of the journalistic quality out of their reporting.

Shortly after Steve Jobs passed away, I watched not only this speech but another that seemed appropriate. Though I was never much for his products under the Apple brand, Jobs' work in the creating Pixar films has always stuck with me and helped me focus and appreciate the beauty that is in the world. There are still moments in movies like Up! and Toy Story that rip my heart out and make me weep like a little baby, and that's such a refreshing thing. I look at creations that have the longstanding affects of a Pixar film or the technology Apple created and it drives me to create and try to find something inside of myself to create and to fight through the times where I just look at my writing and think it's crummy or derivative or silly. I reach for the things that keep me inspired and in awe at one a person or a few people can create, and it makes something as simple as writer's block that could put me into a cage and make it seem less lofty.