Bias in Media

I have stated in my previous post on this blog that we all have biases, predispositions based on experience that affect how we perceive the world. But identifying these biases is very difficult, as there is no clear line between a bias and a value, and since most issues lack a single objective truth, it is complicated to try to decide what you actually believe. But a good place to start is ensuring your information is accurate, and phrased in a mostly neutral way. Knowing this, I have constructed a brief analysis of two articles about the infamous Mueller Report, each from opposite sides of the aisle, and from fairly prolific sources, those being Fox News and CNN. 

The CNN article (linked here) uses terms like "numerous cases" to avoid giving a specific number of times Trump attempted to tamper with the election, while relying on the reader to assume it happened a lot. It also dismisses Barr's analysis of the report as "starkly different" from reality despite the truth of the matter being that the issue is just "more complicated" than Barr claimed. The article further refers to the report as "clouding" Trump's presidency to communicate something vague but decidedly negative. Interestingly enough though, democrats in the article are referred to with words like "steamed", "infuriated" or "slam" which is odd for a left leaning outlet, as this portrays democrats as aggressive.
The Fox article on the other hand is a lot more concrete in its claims. It predictably calls the report "definitive" in proving Trump's innocence while stating that the push for an investigation was mostly from Democrats, to attempt delegitimize it in the eyes of its readers. A large section of the article is devoted to indictments with exact numbers, contrasting CNN's vague, overarching statement, likely to improve the logos of the article and add to credibility, even if the amount of information presented was a bit much. The article also cites no democrats (shocker) and includes quotes from the man the  investigation was into in the first place, who of course called it a witch hunt and claimed it exonerated him. These quotes were placed at the end of the article, to make sure the readers final thoughts were about how wrong and unnecessary the investigation was.
Now both of these articles are more analysis than straight fact reporting with the Fox article being heavier on the facts, but even looking at both it is hard to glean an accurate representation of the Mueller report. The point of this is that having a balanced media diet isn't necessarily the proper solution to eliminate bias. Just because you read an article from Infowars and another from Patribotics doesn't mean you'll get a view spanning both sides of the aisle. But since they're opposite kinds of crazy, that's still considered balanced. The best way to avoid weasel words, doublespeak, and all the other nonsense partisan news outlets use isn't to analyse and acknowledge them, its to just avoid them. If you want a good idea of what the Mueller report contains, check the Associated Press, or heck, just read it yourself!