News should be simple to report on, right? Just look at what happened and tell others about it. Sadly, that is not always the case in the news, especially when it comes to modern politics. With spins and agendas ruling the media outputs on both sides of the aisle, a simple story can easily be turned into a debating point with perceptions on two or more sides. Today, we will be looking at one such story about Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, from the viewpoint of CNN (a liberal-leaning news source) and Fox News (a conservative-leaning news source).
First, we will look at CNN's side of the story. Starting with the title, we can see that CNN uses words like "admitted," "lied" and "credibility" that are blunt and negative in the context given. By being straight to the point with the title, CNN avoids vagueness that could take the responsibility off of Sanders and makes it about her personally. In the article itself, CNN uses language like "misleading," "questioning" and "deceptive" to describe Sanders' words and lay doubt to her credibility. Furthermore, language like "Robert Mueller's report confirms that Sanders simply made it up..." makes it seem that Sanders has always been lying to the public and that this incident only adds to the evidence against her. While CNN definitely touches on true parts of the story and recount the story fairly well, there is some spinning of the story being done which can be attributed to the opposite political alliances of CNN and Sanders.
Now that we have looked at CNN's viewpoint, we can look at the differences in Fox News' portrayal of the story. From the very start of the article, at the title, one can begin to see differences between the two sources. Fox News' title uses wording like "culture of lying" that makes the situation seem vaguer and less direct while also taking personal responsibility away from Sanders and giving it to a broader group. This vagueness is echoed in the article as Fox talks about their own interview with Sanders and less about the actual incident in question here. By allowing Sanders to control the narrative and giving little background on the event itself, Fox makes the incident seem less important in the minds of their viewers. This makes sense as both Fox News and Sanders are conservative-leaning and thus, Fox does not want to hurt their own party by grilling Sanders too hard.
Ultimately, looking at the differing perceptions of CNN and Fox News with this story, we can see the problems surrounding news media when it comes to language. While a story can seem straightforward, the biases and influences surrounding it can lead to multiple narratives. This means that people must be aware of the leanings of the sources they are getting their news from and be able to make informed decisions by looking at multiple viewpoints.
CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/18/media/sarah-sanders-misleading-statements/index.html
Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/george-stephanopoulos-sarah-sanders-mueller-report-culture-lying-white-house
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