With the presidential election quickly approaching, the media have played a huge role in how the candidates are perceived. Many news stations fit into the category of being primarily liberal or conservative. This year especially has shown that separation.

Yes, the debates are fun to watch but have not provided much information on what the candidates want to change within our country. When seeking actual facts about the visions of our future presidents, many of us seek out our typical news station that we trust.

When tuning in, the information that is broadcasted is often spoken in a biased way. It is noticeable how even the news anchors feel about the specific subject and person they are talking about.

Although Republican candidate Donald Trump states that the election is rigged and how others say the media are only showing the positive sides of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, those can all actually be believed as true.

The media are the basis of many lives in modern time, so most people get their information solely from watching TV and believing everything that is being said. The media are very capable of influencing its audiences to believe one side or the other.

When reporting about the election, the media can be perceived as often taking sides about whom they would like to serve as the next president. For example, Snapchat is featuring advertisements that pop up as you are going through your stories. You never know when they will come up, but it is impossible not to see it when they do.

This is a way for the media to manipulate you and get you to think a certain way, even when you did not intend it to.

The ability to immediately produce a story as it is happening can be beneficial, but can also cause a mix up of information.

The quicker the stories are being produced, the easier it is to make a mistake and have it create an everlasting effect.

Using social media can be beneficial to the candidates because it gives them an opportunity to reach out to a large audience at any time.

This can also be a negative aspect because using Twitter and Facebook to connect with supporters gives candidates an easy way to state facts that may not be true. This election, it has been brought up that Trump and Hillary were posting false statistics of polls onto their Twitter pages in order to sway the views of their followers.

Social media is another way for the candidates to bash each other and tweet false information. This just defers from the actual problems at hand, such as the issues they are going to address as being president of the United States.

Overall, as the years go on, the media continues to play a huge role in the selection and public opinion of candidates.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and are not representative of The Slate or its staff as a whole

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