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

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e due to the different structures of the websites (i.e. BBC and CNN both have a single page devoted to U.S. related news, whereas on Fox News those topics are briefly on the main page and are then moved to other web pages, such as Economy and Crime). Nevertheless, the process produced 46 sets of articles that were collected from the main U.S. page of each website. In the following sections, the terms hard and soft news will be used. This division was made not according to topics (e.g. politics being hard news and religion being soft news) but instead according to the overall image composed of topic and style. All opinion and human interest articles were classified as soft news, and all those articles typically defined as hard news, such as politics and the law (Bell 1991: 14 and 147, Media Awareness Network 2012), were defined as hard news. Furthermore, topics such as religion were also classified as hard news if the discussion involved, for example, politics related issues (e.g. separation of church and state) and the article was written in a hard news (as opposed to opinion) style, which involves taking a "factual approach" (Media Awareness Network 2012). The division was necessary due to the focus on language form when analyzing the articles: soft news articles are written in a more informal style, which would have made it difficult to draw general conclusions during analysis. Table 1 demonstrates the final data fully. BBC CNN FOX Total Hard news 116 (+1) 121 (+5) 117 (+24) 354 (+31) of which videos 0 0 29 (+1) 29 (+1) Soft news 0 34 16 50 of which videos 0 2 15 17 Total 116 (+1) 155 (+5) 133 (+25) 404 (+31) of which videos 0 2 44 (+1) 46 (+1) Table 1. Hard and soft news items by website Note: Bracketed numbers indicate those found in the additional data search when completing sets of three. What is immediately notable is that Fox News has a considerable number of videos (45), including hard news videos (30). In comparison, CNN only has two videos, both of which are soft news, and BBC has zero. Headlines of videos are considered 34
in the headline analysis when the style of reporting is appropriate. Otherwise, videos are not further analyzed in this thesis. Having now described the data, I will continue by discussing the methodology and the analytic tools. 7 Methods As was discussed in 3.4, the reactions of the readership constitute an important part of Fairclough's three-dimensional theory, but they cannot be taken into account here due to the limited resources available. Other measures, such as detailed description of the analysis process, are taken to improve reliability. My analysis is built on the foundation of thematic structure and some statistical analysis as well as triangulation of data (i.e. comparing three different articles or sets of headlines, for example). The analysis is merely crystallized through lexical analysis and other observations. Repetition and patterns come to play a role as well, as was mentioned in connection with the discussion of naturalization. Additionally, when statistical and grammatical analysis and linguistic cues do not provide sufficient evidence of bias, alternative interpretations will be presented for a balanced view instead of attempting to claim my interpretation is the only possible one given the available information. Fairclough's model also requires extensive background knowledge of social and societal structures that affect how the institutions in question operate and how the discourse being produced is structured (e.g. Fairclough 1989: 26 and 1995: 74). This, too, prevents me from fully complying with Fairclough's proposed methodology in this language-based thesis. Instead, I have modified his methodology to accommodate more linguistic analysis as the basis of argumentation. Such structures will naturally not be disregarded as they constitute a vital component of Fairclough's model. They will, however, be referenced only to the necessary extent, for example, through the review of the history of the news organizations. Additionally, through the analysis of articles from three websites, the second dimension of Fairclough's model is automatically included: the use of three sources provides a framework of the discourse practice against which individual texts must be evaluated. 35
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 and 12: ecomes clearer how newsworthiness (
Page 13 and 14: 3 Critical Discourse Analysis In th
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: initial methodology, an appropriate
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
Page 63 and 64: Instead, when the police are identi
Page 65 and 66: Finally, to provide a comprehensive
Page 67 and 68: Another aspect of Theme to discuss
Page 69 and 70: Starting with the Theme structure a
Page 71 and 72: When considering the way the law is
Page 73 and 74: trillion in savings over the course
Page 75 and 76: ing in more revenue by spurring eco
Page 77 and 78: mentions taxes 11 times, which cons
Page 79 and 80: While the BBC article does not cont
Page 81 and 82: easy access to all types of birth c
Page 83 and 84: does not refer to the drug in this
Page 85 and 86: Beyond the instances of supporters
Page 87 and 88: at all. It could be argued that if
Page 89 and 90:
was not expected to be present at a
Page 91 and 92:
hidden agendas varied considerably,
Page 93 and 94:
irreplaceable, the additional suppo
Page 95 and 96:
maintain, however, that the methods
Page 97 and 98:
Primary sources BBC Online. 116 art
Page 99 and 100:
Chilton Paul and Wodak Ruth (eds) 2
Page 101 and 102:
Harris Paul 2006. OJ 'confession':
Page 103 and 104:
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
Page 111 and 112:
ideologian käsitteisiin (Blommaert
Page 113 and 114:
(Democrats 2008: i). Konservatismii
Page 115 and 116:
kaikenkattavimpia, puolueettomimpia
Page 117 and 118:
(Halliday ja Matthiessen 2004: 64-6
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Obamasta enemmän kuin Fox News (16
Page 121 and 122:
keskuudessa. Yleisesti ottaen demok
Page 123:
mahdollista tämän tutkielman puit
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