Many news sources covered gun violence and potential gun policies in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon. Each news outlet that covered the issue did it in a slightly different way, and in many cases with some bias. This bias can be caused by a variety of factors, such as the outlet’s target audience, who sponsors the outlet, and even the author’s socioeconomic background. The Washington Post is one of the most well respected news sources in world on both the Internet and in print. The Post showed why it is so well respected in its October 9th article “Most gun owners support restrictions. Why aren’t their voices heard?” This article was very fair to both liberal and conservative policies by showing that not everyone
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According to the Post’s about page on their website, the paper was founded in 1877. This means that it has been in print for 138 years, which is a long time to learn how to be a neutral news source that is able to accurately report the news to the people. That is also a long time to build a solid reputation that no editor would want to have tarnished by any perceived bias. RedState is often considered to be one of the most conservatively biased website on the Internet. This was as clear as ever in their coverage of gun control policies in the aftermath of the Oregon mass shooting. With articles like “Think this Country Has a Gun Problem? Blame Obama” it is hard to deny their conservative bias. Within this article, which was published on October 9, 2015, sentences like “Barack Obama’s unprecedented disregard for the authority of Congress” show that the article is prone to hyperbole, which is a strategy commonly used in biased …show more content…
Vice’s coverage of gun control policies range everything from having very little bias at all to having a significant lean to the left. An October 12, 2015 article, “Why Focusing on Mass Shootings Won 't End Gun Violence in America” is very fair because it focuses primarily on statistics to present a balanced argument. One such statistic, which was based on a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, is that “85 percent of shootings occur within social networks, and that just 3 to 5 percent involve mentally ill shooters.” This statistic would tend to support liberal policies on gun control rather than the conservative argument that better mental health care is the answer. The article later agrees with this conservative idea though when it says “expanding access to mental health care is an important public health imperative.” Since this article shows both sides of the issue it is fair to call it non-biased, but this isn’t true for all Vice
According to the Post’s about page on their website, the paper was founded in 1877. This means that it has been in print for 138 years, which is a long time to learn how to be a neutral news source that is able to accurately report the news to the people. That is also a long time to build a solid reputation that no editor would want to have tarnished by any perceived bias. RedState is often considered to be one of the most conservatively biased website on the Internet. This was as clear as ever in their coverage of gun control policies in the aftermath of the Oregon mass shooting. With articles like “Think this Country Has a Gun Problem? Blame Obama” it is hard to deny their conservative bias. Within this article, which was published on October 9, 2015, sentences like “Barack Obama’s unprecedented disregard for the authority of Congress” show that the article is prone to hyperbole, which is a strategy commonly used in biased …show more content…
Vice’s coverage of gun control policies range everything from having very little bias at all to having a significant lean to the left. An October 12, 2015 article, “Why Focusing on Mass Shootings Won 't End Gun Violence in America” is very fair because it focuses primarily on statistics to present a balanced argument. One such statistic, which was based on a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, is that “85 percent of shootings occur within social networks, and that just 3 to 5 percent involve mentally ill shooters.” This statistic would tend to support liberal policies on gun control rather than the conservative argument that better mental health care is the answer. The article later agrees with this conservative idea though when it says “expanding access to mental health care is an important public health imperative.” Since this article shows both sides of the issue it is fair to call it non-biased, but this isn’t true for all Vice