GOSHDARN LIBERAL MEDIA, WITH THEIR FACTS AND SUCH

In nearly every American news outlet, there is some form of bias. In recent years, these biases have become more and more evident with the continued polarization of the American Political sphere. To look at true media biases, I searched “Trump immigration Fox”, “Trump immigration NBC”, and “Trump immigration NPR”. The point of this was to look at discrepancies in coverage between a traditionally conservative source, Fox, a traditionally liberal source, NBC, and a traditionally unbiased source, NPR. 

FOX

Fox’s immigration article covering Trump discussed his recent comments surrounding his recent comments that illegal immigrants “are getting the hell out or they are going to prison”. The angle that they took with this article was that the undocumented people that he is targeting are dangerous criminals such as MS-13. Fox displayed Trump as an American who was a strong leader that wants clean streets. An example of this bias is speaking of MS-13 and a quadruple homicide. This plants in everyone’s mind that all immigrants are violent criminals, which pushes Trump’s policies of tighter immigration laws. Fox covers Trump as much as anyone. Most of their stories are either coming from Trump himself or Trump’s people. The amount that they are sighting Trump rather than other experts or even elaborating on what he is saying, points to the possibility that Fox is being used as a PR campaign from the Trump camp. 

NBC

For the sake of consistency, I chose to go with a NBC article that covered the exact same comments from Trump. However it had a very different feel than the Fox article. This article had the goal to poke holes in the claims that Trump made about deporting “Tremendous criminals”. It questions the claims for statistical proof then claims that even a “DUI” could result in someone being deported. An example of a bias is the way in which this article frames that “even a DUI, driving under the influence, could result in deportation proceedings.”. That sentence frames that very minor crimes report in deportation, when drunk drivers kill 1000s of Americans every year. NBC covers Trump almost as much as FOX covers Trump. Most of NBC’s stories are a product of their media team because they are looking for the ability to poke holes in any Republican story while remaining truthful. 

NPR

NPR has always been a personal favorite for news because while it has as much excitement as watching the paint dry, it is in general the most unbiased major news outlet. The article I found discussed the ramifications of increased deportations of people who have mandatory ICE check-ins. It seemed to have little bias if any, just reporting and interviewing a women who is directly effected by the increase of deportations. NPR doesn't cover Trump near as much as other outlets, they focus on covering both local and international news and how those stories effect the American people more than staring at Trump waiting for him to blink. Most of their stories are found through their own reporters and media team because of the lesser focus on Trump. 

If I was Trump advisors, I would tell him to not change anything about how he pushes stories. That is because Fox will always back you up, NBC will always bash you, and NPR will always be playing in a little hipster coffeeshop that has some guy named Stue working the register. It will be interesting to see how these news outlets continue to cover stories as the polarization of American politics continues. 

Sources:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/04/18/trump-illegal-immigrant-criminals-are-getting-hell-out.html

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/18/trump-on-bad-immigrants-theyre-getting-the-hell-out-or-theyre-going-to-prison.html

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/03/522424593/immigration-dragnet-gains-support-after-migrants-are-arrested-for-crimes