Over the past couple of months, while presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry have sparked the most intriguing race for the position in many years, one thing has become clear.

Nobody should know exactly what is going on considering so many people are being told so many different things from the news outlets that are covering the 2004 election.

For those normal voters who have tuned in to watch the debates and a few of the stump speeches, most likely the ones at the largest of venues such as the party conventions, it is incredibly hard to decipher what exactly the candidates are saying and who is winning the race for president.

If one thing should be clear to the normal voter, the networks covering the election have done an extremely poor job informing the viewer with unbiased and informative news programming.

So far the national television media outlets, such as the main networks and others like MSNBC and CNN, have proclaimed every possible conclusion from the debates.

Take for example, MSNBC, which immediately following each of the debates turned directly to their hard-core political pundit Chris Matthews and the rest of his Hardball crew that included the likes of Ron Reagan and Joe Scarborough.

All of those who were on the panel had, oh, just about 30 seconds to inhale all that was just said over the 90 minutes that Kerry and Bush spoke.

Without taking any time to seriously consider what had just been said and who presented their points in the best fashion, the panel was ready to declare a victor and explain just how the rest of the presidential race was going to be shaped.

But if one would start to flip around the different channels, they would find just about every different commentator laying down a different verdict.

It seems that while the news channels should be informing people exactly what each candidate meant by what they said instead of voicing their opinion on who won and who will win in the future.

But instead, it seems that each mouthpiece that a news network can find to stimulate excitement within their viewers are interested in his or her opinion much more than actually informing the public.

Another aspect of news that has increasingly gotten less reliable is the use of polling the public.

There are so many different polls, asking different questions and being collected by different organizations that the clarity that each poll provides is significantly decreased.

How can one tell if the poll is worded correctly or if there is biased tilt to any of the questions?

Better yet, the question of who is being asked about each poll is something that could impact the outcome of the final numbers.

The more people become infatuated with knowing information about who has the current edge and is leading the race and hope to receive this information as fast as possible, the less polling services can conduct a proper inquiry into who is leading in whatever situation.

Overall, it seems that the television news in this country is mistreating the regular voter in a noteworthy way by spouting off their opinion rather than genuinely informing those who need to know.