Media

Citizenship Assignment 3

The news story I am comparing is about pres. Trump having “mini-strokes” as reported in a MSNBC story from NBC (Georgian) as well as Fox News (Fordham).

The first question to answer is “Were the facts reported the same in both stories? Or was there something that was left out of one story and not the other?” I found that facts of the two stories seem to agree because they both referenced the same tweet from Pres. Trump and from the same Whitehouse statement from his physician.

The second question was “What did you notice about the language/word choice? Was there leading or subjective language to favor one point of view over another?” The NBC story talked more about the upcoming book “Donald trump vs. The Whitehouse.” than anything else, as if that was the entire reason for the story in the first place. While the NBC story was about the book, the Fox news story discussed why Pres. Trump meet with his doctors at Walter Reed hospital in November of 2019 (which was said to be scheduling conflicts in the upcoming year).

Fox news was the story that mentioned mini-strokes and sited a tweet from Don Winslow. He said that he got the info from “a lot of people, including whistleblowers inside Trump administration”.  This same tweet showed a news clip which the claims to show Pres. Trump slurring his words during a speech on Israel. To me, it sounded like his dentures were loose rather than a stroke. I guess his Efferdent didn’t hold up to his rigorous schedule.

The third question to answer is “Is the media trying to influence your opinion about the topic as mentioned in the textbook under the heading "media influence?" Both these stories are about planting a seed that Pres. Trump is unfit to be president by setting the agenda, or by continuing the agenda.  Fox News went a little further to the left by talking about, and showing, the tweet. Both of them answered the question why he went to Walter Reed. NBC wanted to sell books and bring down trump at the same time so if you hate Trump, buy this book. (And they don’t like capitalism.)

The fourth question to answer is “Are the media in this particular instance performing their proper role in our democracy? Why or why not?” The role of the press is so important that its importance was established in this country’s founding documents. Their role is to inform the public and to act as a watch dog on the actions of politicians and the government at large. This is why it is often referred to as the fourth estate.

In this example about Pres. Trump, they both brought up the story but for different reasons.  The NBC story came out first and was not to inform but to sell books and secondary to reaffirm their narrative that Trump is unfit. If NBC’s story was truly about his health, it would have been focused on the medical aspect and contained quotes from doctors and other medical professionals. The Fox story on the other hand was only written as a rebuttal even though it contained additional information which seemed to bolster the original story. I believe they both failed in their duty because neither was to inform John Q Public, but to sling mud and undermine the office of POTUS. The other story was just to wipe away some of the mud.

The last item was to fact check the story using “Politfact” and “Factchect”. Neither one of these two sites had anything on the story, which doesn’t surprise me. However, the exercise is to become familiar with these web sites for fact checking and perhaps more important, is to not take anything as absolute fact. When I Googled them, I found one set of facts but when I searched using Dogpile, I got something different about these sites. The more you check, from as many sources as possible, the better. It may still take some thought on the readers part but that is what we are to do, present evidence and let the reader decide.

 

 

References

Gregorian, Dareh. Trump raises eyebrows with tweet declaring he did not have 'a series of mini-strokes', MSNBC1 Sep 2020www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-raises-eyebrows-tweetdeclaring-he-did-not-have-series-n1239006

Fordham, Evie. Trump denies suffering 'series of mini-strokes,' doctor says he 'remains healthy' Fox News, www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-denies-stroke-michael-schmidt-book-walter-reed