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

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law entails. Thus this aspect reveals no bias. However, the placement of another fact is much more indicative of bias. The impact of allowing illegal immigrants to qualify for student aid is very small. That is to say, illegal immigrant students are expected to make up just one percent of the entire grant fund. This fact is presented by BBC halfway through the article, CNN presents it very early in the third and fourth sentences, and Fox News leaves it to the very last paragraph of its article. This suggests that CNN highlights the fact that allowing illegal students to apply for the aid would have a small effect on legal students, a liberal viewpoint, while Fox News perhaps hopes most readers do not finish the article, or at least the fact is much less prioritized by Fox News, which represents conservative bias. The placement of the positive and negative content described in a previous paragraph (e.g. quotes from supporters and critics) may also imply a level of bias. For example, factual statements with no indication of bias dominate the CNN article until halfway through, at which point the reporting becomes positively charged. In comparison, the Fox News article includes positive content in the second quarter of the article, and thus in a more prominent position than CNN. Based on this, it can be argued that Fox News is more left-leaning than CNN because it places its pro-legislation content in a more prioritized position than CNN. The positive content, however, is followed by negative quotes and descriptions for the majority of the second half of the article, and, therefore, the argument that Fox News places more left than CNN is not a solid conclusion. This may in part be due to the "complex ranges of voices" (Fairclough [1995] 2003: 77) in media texts, which essentially means a text may comprise of several genres, affecting its composition and interpretation (ibid.). The BBC article is more balanced than the other two, with both positive and negative comments intermittently occupying most of the mid-section of the article. 8.2.3 The Super-committee set The topic of this set of articles concerns the super-committee that was established to find a compromise on how to reduce the U.S. deficit. The 12-member panel consisted of six Democrats and six Republicans who were tasked with finding at least $1.2 68
trillion in savings over the course of 10 years. The main issues include tax reform and budget cuts, mainly regarding entitlement programs (e.g. Medicare) and defense spending. These issues greatly divide the U.S. political field. In terms of taxes, Democrats would increase taxes on the rich (e.g. through a progressive tax code; see section 4) and allow the working classes to spend more of what they earn (Hodge 2009), while Republicans would cut taxes across the board, especially for the rich due to the Republican belief that trickle-down economics 20 spurs job growth and strengthens the economy (Hodge 2009). Additionally, as discussed in the previous section, Republicans would reduce or end funding for entitlement programs, whereas Democrats would want to retain the programs. Finally, Democrats are in favor of reducing defense spending, whereas Republicans are against doing so (Newport 2011). Based on this, assessing bias in the ideas presented in the articles is possible. The sentence-level Themes are separated into six categories based on the topic of the Theme, which include the committee, plans for deficit reduction, and repercussions for not coming to an agreement. Table 6 summarizes the Themes effectively: Theme category BBC CNN FOX Committee 5 4 3 Democrats 3 6 0 Plans 4 10 4 Repercussions 2 1 5 Republicans 2 8 9 Other 5 8 14 Total 21 37 35 Table 6. Sentence-level Themes in the Super-committee articles Some of the main points of interest involve the number of instances the plans are discussed as well as which party occupies Theme position. For example, in the CNN article, ten Themes consist of some reference to the plans to solve the deficit crisis (27 percent of total CNN Themes), whereas the BBC and Fox News articles only have four mentions each (19 and 11.4 percent respectively). Examples of such 20 Trickle-down economics denotes the view that tax cuts for the rich result in wealth trickling down to the middle and lower classes (e.g. Hunt 2011). 69
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"It's Barack Obama Who's Soft" <str
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Table of Contents 1 Introduction...
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1 Introduction In the past two deca
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2 The news media The news is often
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2.2 An outline of media discourse a
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ecomes clearer how newsworthiness (
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3 Critical Discourse Analysis In th
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(Wodak 2001: 4). The key linguists
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grammatical and lexical analysis of
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3.3 Critical Discourse Analysis and
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Page 37 and 38: initial methodology, an appropriate
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Page 41 and 42: The popularity of Hallidayan SFG pa
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Page 47 and 48: As the above examples demonstrate,
Page 49 and 50: Verbal processes result in two Them
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Page 57 and 58: highlight the connection between th
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Page 61 and 62: The lack of such explicit presence
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Page 65 and 66: Finally, to provide a comprehensive
Page 67 and 68: Another aspect of Theme to discuss
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Page 97 and 98: Primary sources BBC Online. 116 art
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Page 103 and 104: Schoetz David 2010. David Frum on G
Page 105 and 106: Appendices Appendix 1. Table detail
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Page 109 and 110: Appendix 3. Finnish summary - suome
Page 111 and 112: ideologian käsitteisiin (Blommaert
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mahdollista tämän tutkielman puit
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