The world has anxiously watched the trial of Derek Chauvin over the last few days. Derek Chavin was a former police officer being tried for manslaughter and second degree murder of George Floyd after what appeared to be excessive use of police force. As in any case, there are those who are in favor of Chauvin, and those who are against. Whether for or against Chauvin, anyone who is not on the jury has no actual say in the outcome of the trail. Typically speaking, major political figures are supposed to remain silent during the process of a trial until a verdict is reached to avoid any sway in the reasoning of those on the jury. President Biden however, recently spoke his feelings on the trail and offered what he thought should be done. Granted, this was while the jury was sequestered with no access to anything from the outside world. News media had very different opinions on this. While I personally believe he should never have said anything at all, there are news sources that either way over exaggerated the effects, or way under exaggerated them. For example, Fox News slanders president Biden, while CNN defends him.
Fox News wrote an article on Biden speaking about the trial. They did not treat it very lightly. We instantly see in the Lede how Fox news feels about this topic as they include, “Remarks from political leaders could potentially be used to support a possible appeal from Derek Chauvin.”(Fox News) The incorporation of this as the very first sentence readers read instantly gives them a negative connotation of the topic and towards Biden. Fox however, is fairly smart in that they never gave an opinion on the actual outcome of the trial, they stayed focused on the remarks of President Biden. Strategies like sourcing helped generate a scene of anger towards president Biden for being so reckless. By using only sources that are completely opposed to what Biden had done, it creates a false narrative that it is the widespread majority who feel the same way that these hand selected individuals do. One that they chose to include was from an OP ED from Andrew McCarthy, “He is a lawyer and former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who well knows that sequestration does not make jurors impervious to prejudicial publicity.” Including specifically sources like these is clearly biased towards the opinion that what Biden did was wrong. Yet, to a normal everyday viewer who may only follow Fox, they are left with the close minded perception that Biden’s pre-trial remarks were outlandishly immature for the president of the United States.
CNN however, took a very similar approach to the same topic. For starters, we can look at the lede once again, but this time it says, “President Joe Biden, breaking his careful silence about the eventual outcome in the trial of Derek Chauvin…” the diction in this first sentence suggests that Biden’s remarks were precaution and thought out beforehand. Using the words “broke his careful silence” focuses on the idea that Biden carefully chose when to speak on this and how to do so. After this, CNN uses sourcing. They chose to use sources like the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki. When asked about exactly what Biden meant when he said the outcome is “overwhelming,” she jumps to the defense of Biden by saying, “we’re not going to get ahead of the verdict.” She also includes, “I don’t think he would see it as weighing in on the verdict. He was conveying what many people are feeling across the country, which is compassion for the family, what a difficult time this is, what a difficult time this is for many Americans across the country who have been watching this trial very closely.” Here we see a connotation that focuses more on the sympathy and empathy that we should feel for Floyd’s family, rather than that of the remarks themselves. In fact, the entire article has way more of a focus on “how the Americans are feeling” and “how devastating the event was.” Should readers only read this article, they would have the perception that Biden has not done anything wrong and was simply offering his condolences to the family and paying his respects.
Overall, different news sources can leave you with very different perceptions of the same topic. As we could see here, readers of the Fox article would likely be largely upset with Biden and his remarks, whereas readers of the CNN article are more likely to feel more compassion on the larger topic. CNN offered a broad outlook on the trail as a whole, while still including the fact that Biden did speak before a verdict was received(it is still news), yet Fox hyper focused an entire article on the effects that Biden’s actions could have had on the trial. This is expected, as Fox is known for being republican, and CNN is known for being democratic. However, both sides are just as bad. If a reader was to only read one of these articles and not the other, they would be left with a very impartial knowledge of the event as a whole. The close mindedness they would second handedly obtain from reading either of these would lead to ignorance and disrespect. It is important that as consumers of news and members of a democracy, that we can detect these biases and form our own opinions based on all the facts, not just one side of them.
