Is U.S news biased?
In class we began to discuss genre and the differences between certain types of genres that constantly impact our lives. We started the conversation by comparing Memoirs and Historical pieces of writing, recording the similarities and differences between the two. One of the similarities that stood out to me the most was that both pieces of writing have some sort of author bias. This caused me to reflect on how, in the United States, news sources are highly polarized and always have some sort of political bias, even more so since Donald Trump was elected.
For the sake of simplicity I am only going to speak about the two main news sources in the United States today, Fox news and CNN. I chose these two not only because they’re two of the most well known news outlets, but because they are also the two most polarized, Fox representing the right and CNN the left. This is the opinion of most of the United States however, in my opinion, CNN does not have a liberal bias, it just does not address conservative opinions if it is not relevant to the news. CNN reports positive and negative news stories on both sides of the political spectrum, for example CNN recently wrote an article praising Ivanka Trump for funding almost 200 million dollars for a STEM grant. Fox news, on the other hand, is committed to pleasing their conservative backers. The only time Fox has stories dealing with liberal policies is almost entirely for the sake of contradicting or disapproving the presented story. For example when a video was released of Former President Obama’s daughter smoking weed Fox immediately reported on it. This news story was not just a report on how the presidents daughter was smoking, but a way in which Fox was able to push it’s anti Marijuana agenda. Regarding health care Fox news only does stories going against Obamacare, never going over how it has helped so many low income citizens in the United States.
Before Trump ran for his presidency CNN was viewed as a reliable news source, with 5% more conservative viewers than liberal, but when they started running news stories that showed Trump in a bad light everything changed. Trump has coined the idea of “Fake News”, referring to any news source that went against his own opinions. This has caused CNN to be viewed as a far-left news source and adding to the horrible polarization of the country. Before Trumps use of “Fake News” it was described as, ” a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content.”(theguardian.com) In the United States people do not understand how the polarization of news sources can effect the country and political system. It is tragic that news sources report only on things that will advance their own political agenda, which leads to ignorance and bigotry across the entire country. To make things worse many people still view Fox as one of the most reliable news sources, even though they only deliver half of the arguments on hot-button topics. In an ideal world a news agency should only deal in actual news, rather than opinions.
Links
http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/politics/ivanka-trump-stem-computer-science/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/03/27/fox-news-all-day-hard-and-conservative/?utm_term=.5470244171ec
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