Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News - Doria

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and it is important to remember that journalists do not simply reproduce corporate and ideological propaganda. One of the main balancing forces are codes of ethics (e.g. Fico et al. 2008: 321). Codes of ethics in the practice of journalism date back at least to the 1920s when, in 1923 and 1926 respectively, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) adopted the Canons of Journalism (Watson and Urofsky 2008: 24). Even though individual codes of ethics were adopted prior to the 1920s, the canons formed the basis of numerous variations of codes of ethics within the field of journalism for many years (ibid.). The codes of ethics were originally created to "improve the quality of American journalism" (Watson and Urofsky 2008: 23). One of the basic messages of the canons which is still upheld is that journalism serves public interests (ibid.: 27, also Allan 2005: 55) instead of those of the individual or corporations, for example. Today, it is widely recognized that journalism and the news are to "maintain democracy" (Berry 2009: 76, also Allan 2005: 59 and 85). Other modern themes based on the canons include "seek[ing] truth and report[ing] it" and "[m]inimizing harm" (Society of Professional Journalists 2009). In relation to this thesis, codes of ethics in journalism are important because they both contribute to how journalists are viewed (i.e. ethical) and act as a counterbalance to the corporate and commercial interests in journalism. What may erode the practice of ethical journalism is the fact that, for fear of losing free journalism, no enforcement of the codes could be implemented (Watson and Urofsky 2008: 23, also Berry 2009: 87). Codes of ethics are therefore upheld by the virtue of the journalists themselves and are not obligatory in order to practice journalism (Berry 2009: 97, also Schotz 2010: 30). As Casten (2003) reports, the Florida Court of Appeals confirmed this lack of rules by ruling in favor of the news organization that fired its two investigative journalists because they refused to report falsified information. Therefore, while journalists may aim to be ethical, there are no legal restrictions on how corporate and other powerful entities can influence the news, making endeavors such as CDA even more necessary. 8
3 Critical Discourse Analysis In this section, I will outline Fairclough's approach to CDA and discuss CDA's connection to the media. Some criticisms against CDA will also be presented. 3.1 Overview and brief history One of the main philosophies underlying CDA is Marxism. Particularly the sense of the word critical 4 in Critical Discourse Analysis is linked with Marxist critical theory (Hammersley 1997: 240, also van Dijk 1993: 251). In another sense, CDA also takes on aspects of social theory. Specifically, Foucault has been identified by many as the main influence behind the concepts in power and ideology related CDA research, such as orders of discourse (Blommaert and Bulcaen 2000: 451, also Chilton 2005: 20 and Fairclough 1989: 12). Marxism and Foucault's power related research can be argued to be the driving force behind contemporary CDA and especially that of Fairclough: both contemporary CDA and Fairclough's CDA combine the Marxist critical view of society with Foucault's theories of, for example, how power is constructed through discourse (Foucault 1970: 51-56, see a further discussion of Marxism, Foucault, and Fairclough's CDA in Meyer 2001: 22). Additionally, a more recent development preceding contemporary CDA is Critical Linguistics (henceforth CL; Hammersley 1997: 237), which denotes the earlier steps taken in the CDA field. It is because of this shared history that the terms CDA and CL are often used synonymously (Wodak 2001: 1). CL was born out of the cooperation of scholars, such as Fowler, Hodge, and Kress (Blommaert and Bulcaen 2000: 453, see also Fowler et al. 1979 and Hodge and Kress 1979 for some of their early work on CL), who worked at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s (Wodak 2001: 5). Wodak goes on to list some of the main features that CL and CDA share. One important shared feature is the notion of critically analyzing discourse (ibid.: 2). Another is "the claim that discourses are ideological and that there is no arbitrariness of signs" (ibid.: 3) in the sense that "signs are always motivated...by the 4 Critical in CDA denotes the "need for analysts to unpack the ideological underpinnings of discourse" (Teo 2000: 12) rather than merely describe its features. 9
Page 1 and 2: "It's Barack Obama Who's Soft" <str
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents 1 Introduction...
Page 5 and 6: 1 Introduction In the past two deca
Page 7 and 8: 2 The news media The news is often
Page 9 and 10: 2.2 An outline of media discourse a
Page 11: ecomes clearer how newsworthiness (
Page 15 and 16: (Wodak 2001: 4). The key linguists
Page 17 and 18: grammatical and lexical analysis of
Page 19 and 20: 3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis and
Page 21 and 22: In addition to the distorted view t
Page 23 and 24: it can be argued that her own inter
Page 25 and 26: One type of conservatism, classical
Page 27 and 28: In their study, Covert and Wasburn
Page 29 and 30: percent respectively; Morris and Fr
Page 31 and 32: transitivity and Theme are not defi
Page 33 and 34: BBC is part of the establishment, a
Page 35 and 36: the United Nations in 1997; ibid.).
Page 37 and 38: initial methodology, an appropriate
Page 39 and 40: in the headline analysis when the s
Page 41 and 42: The popularity of Hallidayan SFG pa
Page 43 and 44: Lexis in general as well as colloca
Page 45 and 46: 8.1.1 Theme in the headlines The ge
Page 47 and 48: As the above examples demonstrate,
Page 49 and 50: Verbal processes result in two Them
Page 51 and 52: CNN, and 8.8 on Fox News (numbers w
Page 53 and 54: all four CNN headlines refer to the
Page 55 and 56: The topic of illegal immigrants 12
Page 57 and 58: highlight the connection between th
Page 59 and 60: The fact that the headline includes
Page 61 and 62: The lack of such explicit presence
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Instead, when the police are identi
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Finally, to provide a comprehensive
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Another aspect of Theme to discuss
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Starting with the Theme structure a
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When considering the way the law is
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trillion in savings over the course
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ing in more revenue by spurring eco
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mentions taxes 11 times, which cons
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While the BBC article does not cont
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easy access to all types of birth c
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does not refer to the drug in this
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Beyond the instances of supporters
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at all. It could be argued that if
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was not expected to be present at a
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hidden agendas varied considerably,
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irreplaceable, the additional suppo
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maintain, however, that the methods
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Primary sources BBC Online. 116 art
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Chilton Paul and Wodak Ruth (eds) 2
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Harris Paul 2006. OJ 'confession':
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Schoetz David 2010. David Frum on G
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Appendices Appendix 1. Table detail
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Cedillo called Saturday's signing "
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Appendix 3. Finnish summary - suome
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ideologian käsitteisiin (Blommaert
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(Democrats 2008: i). Konservatismii
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kaikenkattavimpia, puolueettomimpia
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(Halliday ja Matthiessen 2004: 64-6
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Obamasta enemmän kuin Fox News (16
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keskuudessa. Yleisesti ottaen demok
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mahdollista tämän tutkielman puit
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Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News - Doria

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