Jake Hanczar
Mass media and Society
Nicholes
7/30/14
CNN and FOX
Topics as involved as immigration always have two view points, but it’s not the viewpoints that make the difference, its how they are shown in mass media sources like CNN and FOX. What a news station says sends a completely different message than how they say it. When reading an article like, “Fox News poll: Voters want immigration reform,” from Fox news, you just get the raw data, not a whole lot of expiation. There might be a quick sentence or blub about the data, but it leaves a lot of room out there for the reader to wonder, “What is the significance of this?”, “how will this affect me?” Fox also plays a lot with its numbers. They set their data up in a way that catches the eye. They are able to do this by using drastic ratios, and high and low percentages to clearly show which side are favored. For example they supply the data “Republicans (90 percent), people over the age of 65 (87 percent) and whites (83 percent) are among the groups most likely to favor additional border security.” And “Democrats (82 percent), people under age 30 (81 percent) and non-whites (79 percent) are among those most likely to support a path to citizenship.” Fox also shows which general direction a political party (Republican/Democrat) is favoring. However, it’s interesting to see that they don’t ask each party the same questions.
CNN presents it’s information in a more holistic way. In the beginning of the article they supply the reader with a brief overview of the current situation and other relevant information. This allows the reader to get a better since of the issue at hand and allows them to interpret the actual data in a more complete and informed way. Most of the information that CNN provided was fairly equal; The information was from the American population not just a specific political party. The ratios and statistics were consistently around the 50% as well, and the article also goes into detail to describes the big partisan divide and offers solutions and answers to issues that are drawn between political parties. The CNN article also ties in other peoples articles, opinions and comments to the give the reader a since of direction if they wish to do some research into the topic some more.
Over all there are major differences between the two major information suppliers. Fox gives a harder more raw version of data and information about its topic while CNN has a more holistic approach to supplying the reader with all the information necessary to interpret the raw data and develop their own thoughts on the topic.
References:
Blanton, Dana. “Fox News Poll: Voters Want Immigration Reform.” Fox News. FOX News Network, 13 June 2013. Web. 30 July 2014.
Steinhauser, Paul. “CNN Poll: Border Crisis Impacting Public Opinion on Immigration.” CNN Political Ticker RSS. CNN News, 24 July 2014. Web. 30 July 2014.
Recent Comments