At first glance, I noticed a striking similarity between the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post websites. They don't look like, at least to me anyway, credible news organizations. Just the way their actual websites are put together reek of amateurism. Possibly I am a little biased towards news organizations that were established before the take off of the Internet. But I just think that websites such as the New York Times, CNN and even Fox News look like reliable news sources. But the jury is still out on Fox News...The Drudge Report and the Huffington Post both look like they were put together by your nerdy friend who knows some html code but who isnt actually good enough to work for a real company.
At the moment that I am examining the two websites they differ on what they deem as the most important story. The Drudge Report's main headline is about how the federal deficit is 4 times higher this year, meanwhile the Huffington Post's main headline is about the current oil spill crisis. I don't find this too out of the ordinary, with so many different things going on in the world it is common that news organizations will decide to cover different stories.
Both websites have obvious traces of political leaning littered throughout their respective websites. The Drudge Report has an article titled, "Obama Plans to Punish Oil Firms with Tax Hike." Who says raising taxes was a punishment necessarily. There are many other articles about President Obama's nomination for the Supreme Court. Most of them are very critical of his choice. The Huffington Post meanwhile, has writers such as John Kerry, who ran for President as the Democratic candidate in 2004, and Bill Maher. Their articles, had lefting leaning agendas. And in comparison, their articles about Obama's nomination are attacking the GOP for attacking Kagan.
I certainly believe these "news organizations" have an influence over the general public. In today's world people want to hear ideas that are similar to their own. While they might not get that from tradional journalism they will certainly get it from one of these two websites. The problem with that is that people go to these websites and only get one side of a story when usually there is at least two different sides to every story and possibly more. They come away from these websites having a skewed vision of the world. It is websites like these that are helping polarize viewpoints of our society. Something has to change.
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