Dear Next President,

Have you ever been watching the news and thought, “that's just not correct?" Or felt that all you hear about is celebrities and shootings? This is because the media is biased to the point they have been lying to us for years, so we are now uneducated and create opinions based on the little or wrong information we are given by the media. There is a code of ethics for journalism but most of the media has long abandoned it. This code is trying to remove the biased from media by having journalists: "seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, be accountable and transparent." I feel we need a single outlet that will strictly follow the SPJ Code of Ethics so we can have at least one outlet for unbiased educational news.

Let's talk about the election, who is running for president? Who wants to build a wall? Who has deleted her emails? We all know who they are. But does everyone know who the Green Party candidate is, or same with Libertarian Party candidate? These last two candidates don't get the recognition they deserve, and these people are running just as legitimately as the two major parties candidates. Why don't they get as much attention? It is because they aren't in the two main parties so the media sees them as not important. There are even more scary issues with what the media is doing around the election. An ABC News/Washington Post poll from Sept. 5-8, revealed that 35% percent of Americans said the economy was their “single most important issue." In the same month that ABC released that poll, World News Tonight with David Muir spent twice as much time on a major Hollywood breakup than the state of the U.S. economy. Also, when we do hear about the about the election and economy it's from bias reporters and the two main party candidates. In an election that is so contentious, people need to hear from other candidates and other options that are not only on the Republican or Democrats side.

The election is just a topical example. There are other topical issues than those, such as police brutality, and the black lives matter movement. We hear about the movement through coverage of the Baltimore riots, and when protests become violent. Furthermore, we mostly see blacks protesting for blacks, so someone could see this and think thats its only an issue if you are black. In reality it is America's issue and people of all color are protesting for about this issue. In Oklahoma City there were thousands of people of color protesting peacefully for reform in their city, nothing got out of hand, so national news did not cover this story, only their local channels did. I feel that this should be on the national news, so people can see these stories as well as the other stories. People need to see all sides.

The issue though is the media coverage. I feel we need one news outlet that is reviewed by a committee looking at the SPJ Code of Ethics. They would be doing a strict evaluation of the script to make sure the news isn't breaking these codes. We can keep all the other stations, we just now have at least one the we can trust. In a time where news travels all over the world at speeds like we have never seen before, don’t you think we need this new outlet?

Michael L.