Media Bias: The Huffington Post

        The White House Correspondents Association dinner has caused outrage and praise due to Michelle Wolf’s performance. She performed a roast of Donald Trump and his White House staff. Before the roast even took place, there was the potential that the dinner was going to be controversial because of Wolf herself. She is a correspondent on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, a show known for its criticism of Trump and conservatives in general. Wolf received criticism from both liberal and conservatives media outlets. Multiple journalists and public figures have demanded that Wolf apologizes to those that were the center of her jokes.

        This article was posted by The Huffington Post, notorious for its liberal viewpoint on politics. The article was posted by Michelangelo Signorile, a liberal, LGBT+ activist, Editor-At-Large for The Huffington Post, and host of his own radio show “The Michelangelo Signorile Show.” To find this article the reader must go to the politics section and then go to the Donald Trump subsection to read it. The article is critical of how mainstream media reacted to the dinner. It was aimed at how conservatives reacted to it as well as how moderate liberals reacted. He specifically called the conservatives reactions as “troubling hypocritical,” due to comments that the President has made but has not received repercussions because of them. Confirmation bias is very present in this article due to the constant implication that Wolf’s performance was not bad because Trump has made controversial statements. He also framed the reactions of those who were being insulted and certain groups of the audience. He described people around him “were laughing generously in response to many jokes,” and said that Jeff Zeleny called the performance an “embarrassment” because he was sitting “near White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House officials who sat on the main table on the stage.”

        Even though this article was an opinion piece, it was an example of bias as well as immaturity. By saying what Wolf said was okay because Trump has made controversial statements shows that it is okay to go down to the tactics that people of their opposing parties use. By saying how he and his peers reacted to the jokes had implications that if they believed it was funny and harmless than everyone else should feel the same thing.

        Another problem with the piece is that he did not present any other quotes that  supported the side he stood with. He used multiple tweets and quotes from those offended and used himself as support for his own feelings towards the dinner. Signorile used a total of twelve quotes and tweets of those who were offended and did not use any that supported Wolf and her performance. By only using quotes of those being offended he framed them as overreacting to the situation.

        This article was not difficult to find political bias due to the confirmation bias, and framing being very prevalent. Because of this, it is easy to make the conclusion that this article has bias towards conservatives

 

 

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-signorile-michelle-wolf_us_5ae644f1e4b02baed1bb544d

 

Media Bias: The Blaze

        With recent debates over gun policy, another story has emerged that is up for debate. This time it was a non-violent issue taking place at a middle school. A student was disciplined twice for wearing t-shirts that had certain imagery on them. The first time he was wearing a shirt from a local gun shop, and the second time he was wearing a shirt that had no imagery of gun and had the sentence “Don’t Tread On Me.” The exact extent of the punishment was not stated all that was said about the situation was that the teacher said to cover up the shirt. The family has received support from the Firearms Policy Foundation and the Firearms Party Coalition. Both of these organization support the Second Amendment.

        The Blaze is contributing to the agenda setting of conservative views towards the Second Amendment. The article only used quotes from those that are supporting the students side of the lawsuit. It almost seems as if they did not try to receive quotes from anyone on the opposing side of the case. The article states that they attempted to receive a report from the school district but said that the only quote they received was that the district was “looking into the allegations.” Besides this there are no other quotes from people on the opposing side. Thus making it impossible to see what people who oppose the Second Amendment have to say about this situation. All of these factors add up to give a conservative perspective of this story as opposed to a neutral perspective.

        This article is has strong and very identifiable conservative ideals, but as opposed to being obviously bias it is subtly bias. To start, the site where this article is located is The Blaze, which is a notoriously right leaning news source. Before the article begins there is a mini profile for who wrote the article, Aaron Colen, who is a moderate conservative. His profile goes onto show that his influences are strictly conservative. Colen’s political bias is suttle throughout the article, making it seem as if it is reporting on the incident from a neutral view. Also, the quotes used from the student’s attorney portray him as being the victim in this situation. The situation itself could have been handled better by the teacher, but it strays away from the fact that the student was already disciplined once and chose to wear another shirt with similar views over three months later. At the conclusion of the article, a guide in an attached link by the Firearms Party Coalition was given so that “pro-gun students use their freedom of speech to push back against the widespread gun control protests of the past few months.” This alone is proof to show that the article has a pro-gun connotation. The FPC did not release this guide because of the one situation reported on. However, the author put the link in this article knowing that it would be useful for his audience. Showing the author’s political bias, giving the article a more pro-gun standpoint.

        The quotes and information given in this article is enough proof to accuse the author and committing confirmation bias. By only showing conservative viewpoints and quotes he does not allow for the readers to see a neutral or liberal viewpoint of the situation.

 

 

https://www.theblaze.com/news/2018/04/30/student-sues-school-district-after-allegedly-being-disciplined-for-pro-gun-shirts

Article Comparison: Kim Jong Un Visit to China

A mysterious meeting between China and North Korea has led to speculation as to who was involved in the meeting and what the purpose of the meeting was. For about three days all that was know is that a mysterious train appeared in China from North Korea. There were no reports to confirm if Kim Jong Un or a high ranking officer were on the train. It would later come out that Un and his wife Ri Sol Ju were aboard the train. The meeting between Un and Xi Jinping included discussion about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and starting conversation between the leader of South Korea Moon Jae and the president of the United States Donald Trump. Following the meeting Xi hosted a banquet for Un at the Great Hall of the people. Chinese officials notified the U.S. government of the meeting as well as Jinping giving President Trump a personal message about the meeting.

One of the news sources I chose to examine was Fox News. The conservative media outlet gave a more narrative way of presenting the story. It felt more like a friend discussing the meeting as opposed to a news outlet. Given that the meeting was very recent and details of it are just surfacing the article was shorter with few quotes to go off of. The quotes were from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders and Un. There were photos of Jinping, President Trump, and Un. These photos were not from the meeting but were separate photos taken at past events.

The other news source I chose was from CNN. The liberal media source was more analytical about the meeting. Using more quotes from different people involved like Jinping and Jean Lee. Lee is an analysts at Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History at The Wilson Center. The article also had different subsections discussing different aspects of the story such as North Korea becoming an equal player with other world leaders, the White House crediting “maximum pressure”(Berlinger, Jiang) to get this meeting to happen, and how this meeting is going to start a tradition of friendship between the two countries. The article also included pictures of the train and a chart of the route the train used to get from the Pyongyang train station to the Dandong train station in China. There was also a picture of Un with his wife as well as Jinping and his wife.

Both of the articles have a lot of similarities, but in these similarities are a considerable amount of differences. Both of the articles do not give an obvious stance on the meeting. They provide the reader with the basic facts with what happened during this meeting and Un’s time in China. However, there are different implications in the articles. The Fox News article presented an article that was more concerned with presenting the story of the meeting itself. The CNN article was a lot more analytical and provided details outside of the meeting. They also analyzed what could and will happen because of this meeting.  

 

CNN- https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/27/asia/north-korea-kim-jong-un-china-visit/index.html  Fox-http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03/27/kim-jong-un-meets-with-chinese-leader-on-unofficial-visit-state-media-says.html

Article Comparison: Stephon Clark Shooting

Protests in Sacramento, California has lead to the delay of a Sacramento Kings basketball game. The cause for these protests is the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark. On March 18th, police received reports “that a man had broken car windows and was hiding in a backyard.”(Hamasaki, Park, Simon) Police approached Clark telling him to keep his hands up. Clark then approached the police with his arms extended holding an object. The police commanded him to stop and then proceeded to shoot at him twenty times, multiple bullets hit him. After the shooting the police reported that the object Clark had in his hand was a cellphone. The two officers involved reported that from their perspective the cellphone looked like a gun. This incident fueled the cause for protests in Sacramento. The location of the multiple protests took place at the Sacramento city hall, Interstate Highway Five, and the Golden 1 Center. Members of the Black Lives Matters movement helped organize and participate in these protests. The protest on Interstate Highway Five did not originally take place at the highway. The protest began at city hall and once they left they proceeded get onto the highway. Due to them gathering on the highway it cause traffic to back up for about a mile.

The first source I used to examined was an article posted by Fox News. The article posted was very quote driven. The article grabbed quotes from twitter accounts of the Sacramento Kings and Sacramento Police, Mayor Darrell Steinberg, members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and Fermin Rodriguez who was not allowed to enter the arena to watch the basketball game. Pictures of demonstrators in city hall, Interstate Five, and in front of the arena were provided as well. The article did give a brief description of the incident itself so that the reader was able to know the basics of the situation.

The second article used to examine was posted by CNN. This article was very analytical and narrative driven. The article was broken up into three categories. The first one was describing the protest at the arena, followed by a section discussing other protests taking place in San Francisco, and finished by a description of the shooting itself. The quotes from this article were similar to the Fox News article. However, the quotes that CNN had that Fox did not were from the owner of the Sacramento Kings Vivek Ranadivé, Sgt. Vance Chandler of the Sacramento Kings, and Stevante Clark the brother of Stephon Clark. The article also had pictures of Stephon and his brother. Besides these pictures the article gave more videos from the scenes of the protests and one video of Ranadivé addressing the audience at the Kings game about the shooting.

The two articles gave different ways as to reporting the situation. Fox News reporting on the reactions of the shooting from the community and protestors. CNN gave a holistic view of the story. Going into depth about what happened and as well as going into depth about the protests themselves. Both articles did not take political stances on the issue and just presented the story for informing the reader.

 

CNN- https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/22/us/sacramento-police-shooting-protests/index.html

Fox-http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/23/protest-over-fatal-police-shooting-delays-nba-game-in-sacramento.html

Media Diary

For my diary I used Facebook to access media. The reasoning for this is because on my Facebook account I have a wide variety of age. My youngest friend being sixteen years old and the oldest being around the age of seventy-five. As opposed to using Twitter or Snapchat where the age range is considerably shorter ranging from sixteen to twenty-three. By having a larger age range there is a greater possibility of seeing what news is shared by people with a wide variety of political beliefs. The three main sources that were shared on the feed this past week, March 21st through the 28th, were CNN, Fox News, and ABC News. Other sources like Vice News, The Blaze, The New York Times, etc. were shared but these three sources were consistently shared by the majority of my Facebook friends. The topics that were being reported on the most were the Stormy Daniels scandal, the shooting of Stephon Clark, and Joe Biden’s comments towards Donald Trump.

The topic of the Stormy Daniels scandal provided different responses from the people on Facebook. People who leaned right did not share articles as much as those who leaned to the left. People who shared articles concerning this scandal did not comment on the scandal itself but how Trump is keeping his silence on the issue. As opposed to how he has responded to different issues by almost saying too much about topics that concerned him.

The shooting of Stephon Clark provided very neutral posts from everyone who shared it. The  two aspects of the story that caused debate on Facebook was how demonstrators led the protest to Interstate Highway Five and people not being allowed into the Sacramento Kings game. The debate over demonstrators on the highway was not between liberals and conservatives. Similar to this, people voiced that it was not fair to the people who paid for tickets to watch the game to not even be allowed in. But there were liberals and conservatives on both sides of the argument on the two issues.

The last issue was the one that set a clear divide between liberals and conservatives. It was the comments Joe Biden said about Donald Trump. Biden said that if he were in high school with Trump, he would beat him up for the way that he talks about women. My liberal friends commented that they felt that it was hypocritical of conservatives to be mad about Biden’s comments when they consistently defend Trump over his controversial comments. My conservative friends then went on to comment on how it was hypocritical of them to defend a politician of their political ideology to make controversial comments about physically assaulting another person. Viewing these back and forths in real time was almost hysterical. It was like a grown up version of a schoolyard argument. It is not shocking that this topic was more divided due to the politicians that were involved.

This media diary was a very interesting activity to take part of. Most of the time when I scroll through Facebook and see arguments over political topics I do not pay attention to them because of past experiences where they become personal. However, with viewing this activity the people involved kept the conversation on the topic without straying off topic and making it personal.