Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News - Doria
Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News - Doria
Political Bias on BBC, CNN, and Fox News - Doria
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producer's 'interest'...which determines the characteristics that are to be selected <strong>and</strong><br />
to be represented" (Kress 1993: 173, see also Fowler 1991: 4). That is to say, the<br />
writer must always choose the words she uses, <strong>and</strong>, therefore, CDA's claim that all<br />
texts are ideological holds true.<br />
The brief background provided in the previous two paragraphs clarifies why CDA is<br />
founded <strong>on</strong> two principle asserti<strong>on</strong>s. One, all discourse reproduces ideologies<br />
(Fowler 1991: 10) of some kind or another. Two, these ideologies or hidden agendas<br />
are viewed as being reproduced for the benefit of the dominant group(s) in society<br />
(Fairclough 1989: 22). In other words, discourses are structured in a way that<br />
reproduces those comm<strong>on</strong>-sense structures of society (i.e. ways of thinking or doing<br />
things) which benefit those with power, be it power through m<strong>on</strong>ey, numbers, or<br />
authority. C<strong>on</strong>sequently, for CDA it is crucial to expose the hidden agendas to<br />
denaturalize those comm<strong>on</strong>-sense c<strong>on</strong>cepti<strong>on</strong>s of how the world functi<strong>on</strong>s<br />
(Fairclough 1995: 27). One of the aims in CDA research is, therefore, to reveal these<br />
ideologies to create transparency.<br />
Despite the unifying features listed above, CDA is not known to be a single theory or<br />
method of analysis because it is neither. In fact, there are several theoretical<br />
st<strong>and</strong>points that can be adopted within CDA to create a range of different approaches,<br />
ranging from those that highlight cognitive or socio-psychological theories to those<br />
highlighting discourse theories or even general social theories (Blommaert <strong>and</strong><br />
Bulcaen 2000: 450 <strong>and</strong> Wodak 2001: 18-20). This diversity of the field can be<br />
partially attributed to the variety of uses to which CDA has been applied. For<br />
example, some of the more popular topics in CDA research include political<br />
discourse, media language, ideology, racism, <strong>and</strong> gender. A more extensive list can<br />
be found in Blommaert <strong>and</strong> Bulcaen (2000: 450-1). Of these, instrumental to my<br />
thesis are the first three: political discourse (e.g. Fairclough 1989 <strong>and</strong> 1995), media<br />
language (e.g. Bell 1991 <strong>and</strong> van Dijk 1988), <strong>and</strong> ideology (e.g. Fowler 1991).<br />
It was not until 1991 that practiti<strong>on</strong>ers of various different approaches to CDA found<br />
their way into the same room <strong>and</strong> an internati<strong>on</strong>al network of researchers was formed<br />
10