After hearing about different opinions regarding cable news, I found myself becoming more curious about bias in the media, especially within CNN and Fox News, the two most popular cable news channels. What I wanted to know is: how biased are CNN and Fox News? Most people are aware that CNN tends to lean more liberal and Fox News leans more conservative. However, through my research, I learned that the perception of bias in the media is based on relativity. Furthermore, I found that it is best to use a variety of resources when researching a topic and to use the information founded in one source to help further one’s research. In this essay, I will inform the reader about the knowledge I had prior to my search, the way in which I learned that
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The next step in my research was to determine how biased CNN and Fox news are in relation to each other. At first, I was having trouble finding this information using a Google search, so I utilized the resources provided to me through the University of Iowa’s Library. I used both the Academic Search Elite and the Communication and Mass Media Complete databases. A common result between the two was “Perceptions of Political Bias in the Headlines of Two Major News Organizations.” This journal described a study on perceptions of political bias in headlines of CNN and Fox News during the 2004 presidential campaign. In the study, groups were given headlines from both CNN and Fox News and asked to rank them with 0 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative. Some groups were given paired headlines, where one headline from CNN would be paired with a corresponding Fox News headline; other groups were given the same headlines, however they were in random order. In both cases, participants were not told which news source the headlines came from, yet each group’s participants rated CNN’s headlines as significantly more liberal than Fox News’. Therefore, one could say that the participants’ perceptions, when comparing headlines, are that CNN has a liberal bias and Fox News has a conservative one. However, if one were to look at each individual channel’s rankings – …show more content…
I found that they provided similar charts that again analyzed the tones of CNN and Fox News when covering two presidential candidates, Obama and Mitt Romney, in 2012. Instead of determining how biased the cable news channels were relative to other things, I was able to compare the coverage of the candidates within the same channel. CNN was 36% negative and 11% positive regarding Romney, but 21% negative and 18% positive regarding Obama. On the other hand, Fox News was 12 % negative and 28% positive regarding Republican Romney, but 46% negative and 6% positive regarding Democrat Obama. Because Romney leans right and Obama leans left, perceptions are that CNN is slightly liberal and Fox News is very conservative. In this scenario, perception of bias is in relative to the topic being covered, and perhaps when covering other topics, perceptions of bias in CNN and Fox News would
The next step in my research was to determine how biased CNN and Fox news are in relation to each other. At first, I was having trouble finding this information using a Google search, so I utilized the resources provided to me through the University of Iowa’s Library. I used both the Academic Search Elite and the Communication and Mass Media Complete databases. A common result between the two was “Perceptions of Political Bias in the Headlines of Two Major News Organizations.” This journal described a study on perceptions of political bias in headlines of CNN and Fox News during the 2004 presidential campaign. In the study, groups were given headlines from both CNN and Fox News and asked to rank them with 0 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative. Some groups were given paired headlines, where one headline from CNN would be paired with a corresponding Fox News headline; other groups were given the same headlines, however they were in random order. In both cases, participants were not told which news source the headlines came from, yet each group’s participants rated CNN’s headlines as significantly more liberal than Fox News’. Therefore, one could say that the participants’ perceptions, when comparing headlines, are that CNN has a liberal bias and Fox News has a conservative one. However, if one were to look at each individual channel’s rankings – …show more content…
I found that they provided similar charts that again analyzed the tones of CNN and Fox News when covering two presidential candidates, Obama and Mitt Romney, in 2012. Instead of determining how biased the cable news channels were relative to other things, I was able to compare the coverage of the candidates within the same channel. CNN was 36% negative and 11% positive regarding Romney, but 21% negative and 18% positive regarding Obama. On the other hand, Fox News was 12 % negative and 28% positive regarding Republican Romney, but 46% negative and 6% positive regarding Democrat Obama. Because Romney leans right and Obama leans left, perceptions are that CNN is slightly liberal and Fox News is very conservative. In this scenario, perception of bias is in relative to the topic being covered, and perhaps when covering other topics, perceptions of bias in CNN and Fox News would