Thursday, October 17, 2013

Can we say Biased!

So here are two articles I came across that are both describing the lifted furlough and the next steps the US government should make. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24563189

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/17/with-budget-deal-national-debt-free-to-soar-again/

The first article, US Governmental Employees Head Back to Work, describes how Obama signed the deal ending the shutdown and extending the debt limit.  It later describes how this decision by Obama was very much needed but it still does not resolve the budgetary issues that the Democrats and Republicans have continuously fought over.  However, this decision does create a committee with mixed party members that are supposed to craft a long term budget.  Finally, the article notes Obama's views on how the Republican's tactics during the shutdown caused more harm to the population.

The second article on Fox news, With Budget 'deal' national debt free to soar again, is a similar article but it talks about the national debt and what our government will do.  It notes that this debt increase is the sixth since Obama took office (three times when Democrats controlled Congress and three times when Republicans controlled the house).  Then the article continues to describe and note percentages of how much the debt has risen under Obama's terms.  In addition, "Republicans have been more modestly emboldened in their push for spending cuts after the dire consequences that administration officials said would emerge."

After reading these two articles the reader can note clear differences in the journalists viewpoints towards budget spending, Obama, and the conflict amongst Republicans and Democrats.  I feel as if the BBC article is simply stating more of the facts, besides stating Obamacare instead of calling the health plan by its full name, and the Fox news article is leaning more towards the Republican viewpoint.  It is evident in the Fox article that they want to make sure the reader knows that the national debt is increasing because of Obama and that there was such a delay in lifting the furlough because Obama would not budge.  In the BBC article I found there is not much information on the Republican standpoint and more direct quotes from Obama on the issue which is very biased and against the Republican party. 
Have you noticed that news articles on the same subject read completely differently due to the bias that is, almost always, introduced into the material?  I know each reader should keep their mind open, but do you believe that in todays society he population only reads one article and believes that the information given is true???

1 comment:

  1. I found your post very informative! I, too, have been taking a look at the way different politically leaning news outlets cover stories, and it can be crazy how different they are. As you highlighted, biases reveal themselves all over the place, and it makes a story look totally different depending on the perspective. And yeah, I do believe that majority of the population get their information from articles found on whatever news site and believe what they read/hear. Whether it's because of a lack of time, interest, or whatever, people just don't look to get every side of a story by looking at different perspectives. And as you alluded to in your post, that's really not a good thing.

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