The Media is the Religious Institution of the Western World

First of all, the affirmative and I have agreed to change our definition of a religious institution to "having an organized collection of belief systems or cultural systems" and "the visible manifestation and authority of a specific religion". My opponent has mentioned a wide range of conspiracy theories which lead him to define 'The Media' as a religious institution. First I will demonstrate how much fact is really behind the theories, then I will argue his comparison of The Media and religion as fundamentally flawed. "during the recent US election, many news sources lambasted every move that Trump made, going so far as the quote five words from a sentence he spoke more than a decade prior. " There is reason for this. Trump made plenty of questionable 'moves' during the American presidential election campaign and throughout his life. The five word sentence you referenced (I assume you mean the Billy Bush hot mic incident) as well as the rest of the tape is unheard of for a presidental candidate and would naturally cause an uproar. News broadcasters are meant to broadcast interesting or significant events, and this certainly was one. Showing it from one perspective was inevitable and The Media naturally, for PR purposes if not out of moral decency, didn't side with a man who made such a disgusting and ungentlemanly remark, especially someone who, as a presidential candidate, would be expectedl to conform to high standards. That remark was newsworthy, whether you like it or not. (1) Also, opportunities to criticise Hillary Clinton are few and far between given she's a professional and competent political operative that's careful about her appearance in the media. Despite this, all the way over in Australia we never heard the end of her email scandal, the DNC leak, and probably Benghazi when it happened. The suggestion Trump is being unfairly scrutinised by the media is wrong. Another frankly ridiculous conspiracy theory my opponent has brought up is the 'Clinton body count', and the media's reluctance to report on the murder of a man who happened to be a low-level staffer at the DNC. In doing this he contradicted himself by citing a source (in the comments) consistent with our definition of 'the media' that did report on the murder. The truth is, people get murdered all the time I'm a country where anyone can buy a gun. I won't even enter into the ridiculous suggestion Mrs Clinton has had people murdered, there is no official or credible evidence she did anything of the sort. The website the affirmative cites offers a range of increasingly ludicrous conspiracy theories and offers me a free Dell computer on every second link I click. My phone won't even open the other cited link for some scary computery reason. Pro has also suggested the media consistently pushes for feminism and political correctness for some suspicious reason. The media has to be politically correct, otherwise they get sued (2). Every outlet has a bias, but not all biases are the same. In America, for example (as far as I know) Fox News has a right wing bias while CNN is seen as leaning further to the left. Biases are natural, and, as long as a wide range of opinions are available, shouldn't be criticised. While Trump-supporting Americans are crapping on about how the media is all left-wing conspiracy, they source their news from MEDIA sources like Breitbart and (heaven forbid) Tomi Lahren. If people aren't happy with the views of the mainstream media they should accept they are out of the mainstream, or be the change they want to see and work to change the minds ignoring the mainstream. As I see things, the media is not one consensual 'religious institution', but a wide variety of sources that offer a wide variety of different opinions. Saying The Media is one religious institution is like saying Christianity and The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are one religion, which they most certainly are not. The obvious difference between the media and a religious institution is that the latter offers one consistent set of rules, values and dogma, but the media is diverse, doesn't 'preach' any principals and is often self contradictory, if you can even see it as one body (which it most certainly isn't). Hopefully in the next rounds we can get a bit more factual and in-depth, I went up to 5 minutes within the end of the deadline so sorry my argument isn't very thorough.