Los Angeles Times Policy Analysis

A liberal is a person that believes that the government should provide equality for all, while a conservative is a person that believes in limited government and that the government should provide the necessary freedom for people to pursue their own goals. Over time, it has been argued, mostly by conservatives, that there is a liberal bias in the media. Liberals have combated this idea with the belief that conservative media is devoted to making efforts to invoke fear and division in the general public. Though liberals make a fine counter-argument, it is easier to observe that the media is liberal-biased. The liberal versus conservative debate can be compared to facts versus values. Another reason for bias within the media is that a significant percentage of minorities, or smaller groups within the population that are often thought to be poorer, politically identify themselves as liberals. To make these minorities feel like the government is on their side as well as everyone else’s, the media must accommodate the needs of these minorities. Because of this, the media becomes liberal-biased.

Consequently, the political sphere is now being colonised by the media, and politics has begun re-orientating itself to satisfy the logic of media organisations (Meyer, 2002, p. 71). Therefore, the media are active participants in the policymaking process and the ability to stimulate change or maintain the status quo depends on their choice of subject or policy issue and how they frame it. Active investigative reporting attempts to shape policy outcomes, but this does not necessarily mean that it always represents the most successful approach for gaining policy changes (Spitzer, 1993, p. 7). In fact, sometimes passive, straight reporting can have a greater influence on policy choices. When this occurs, media independence is largely bypassed, as the news generated depends solely on the information released (as public relations material) from legitimate news sources. For example, in the United States, White House staff routinely make ‘leaks’ - expressively to influence policy decisions (Davis, 1992, p. 143; Robinson, 2001, p. 948). Robinson noted that journalists regard “leaks… as indispensable to their work” and that they are aware of their use by officials in return for scoops (2001, p. 949).

In chapter 2 of The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser, after discussing how although two newspapers still create the base of almost all news stories that get shared online, newspapers are failing daily. He then explains how news became centered around “public opinion” instead of just information about the outside world. Pariser reminds us that:

The PBS anchor was one woman with little to no makeup on, and dressed more conservative, while on the fox news there were two anchors, a man and a woman dressed more professional with a suit and the woman wearing a little more revealing dress. When delivering the news, PBS has their stories last approximately ten minutes and for this specific day, they focused more about France and their presidential election while the fox news touched the surface on France but talked about a shooting that occurred over there. The fox news lacked detailed stories because jumped to recent events rather quickly. For example, Fox talked about wall street, the weather, France, tragic events and deaths, for less than 10 minutes each, making it hard to understand the importance of each event. While the anchors from Fox would communicate with a third person located in another area to give their reports, the PBS anchor gives a more intimate connection with her reports, by showing the events that are occurring then talking about them right after, she would also give interviews with people one on one, like she did with the united nation security general. The news being distributed in different ways, the Fox news hold a more emotional appeal to their viewers because the audience who watch fox news are from around the area and are familiar with the events that occur. The Fox news give the stories and weather updates that the local viewers need to know because it has a relevant purpose to their lives, compared to the PBS news, that gives educational but irrelevant news because their news does not provide current issues that can affect the viewer’s life. The PBS news gives an appeal to facts rather than an emotional appeal because it states facts that happen around the world but not about close events that can connect to the viewer personally. Overall the news is a

|current affairs and the public services’ response.Consider if the media coverage differs in different newspapers or television|

Despite this similarity, majority of the soft news presented in the Guardian still relates to politics,

The biggest breaking story I chose was about the Afghans heading to the polls to vote amid the threats of insurgent attacks. On the CNN website, it seemed like the story was less detailed and descriptive than the other sites. Even though it covered the situation in Afghanistan, the information was delivered in a more passive way than FOXNews and MSNBC, almost as if it was a more opinion-based article. I noticed also that some of the key points that were covered on the CNN site were also covered in the other sites. Information on how many candidates were competing for election and how many seats were available in parliament seemed to be a point that all of the sites included. One main difference in the information that CNN covered, compared

Based on Nielsen audience ratings from the country’s two largest media markets (Los Angeles and New York), it is clear that the number of Americans who tune in to local news programs on a daily basis far exceeds those who watch national newscasts. Averaging across both markets, the cumulative audience for evening local news easily surpasses the cumulative audience for national news. (Iyengar &Reeves, 1997)

Table 1 shows my results after reading 30 newspaper articles. Ten from the LA times, ten from the Washington Post, and Ten from USA Today. After doing a content analysis of all thirty articles I found that the main difference in how the newspapers talk is the language and the quotes from the citizens in the Washington post. The way that the three newspaper companies talk about the DC sniper is different. After reading these newspaper articles each newspaper company talks about the events a little differently. The Washington Post articles tended to be the longest in length and went into much greater detail than the other two newspaper companies. The articles from USA Today were the shortest in length and did not go into much detail about the crimes committed. These articles just talked about the events and what happened with going into much detail about how this really affected the community. The LA Times was in the middle of these two newspaper companies. These articles went into more detail than the USA Today. Even though the numbers show that USA Today, the LA Times went into greater detail about the events. The Washington Post went into greater detail

The Atlantic is a magazine and internet source providing thought provoking articles on topics such as politics, business and culture. In the Pew Research Center findings, “Section 4: Demographics and Political Views of News

It is clear that in each article I was only getting one side not the full report of the story. However, I do feel that CNN.com did a more accurate look at my topic, which was the Pope at the Paris Summit. The reason I believe that U.S. News’s article is not as good of a news source because when reading it, reads more like a complaint, or a letter to the editor type article than an actual news article on the topic of the Paris Summit. The U.S. News article only had one source and he was a self proclaimed official source, where as the CNN.com piece actually had quotes from several of the different members that were at the summit as well has official comments from Pope Francis. Also the CNN.com piece was worded nicely and had an air throughout the piece of just wanting to give the facts of the story, whereas the U.S News article was force feeding complaints and used wording that almost half way through I just wanted to stop reading because it was an opinion packed piece and only really a few times hinted at facts. Therefore, I would have to say that the CNN.com piece not only gave me facts that I wanted to learn it also peaked my interest in the topic and made me want to go out and research more about the topic from other sites, which I feel is good journalism because it’s hooked the reader unlike the U.S. News piece that was not very factual and made me want to stop

Despite being printed for the same date, in this case January 30th, 2014, the distinction can still be made, and by this it can be said that if the titles of the newspapers were removed it would not be hard to distinguish one from the other. By placing the front page of the New York Times (NYT) and of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) side by side, the reader can piece together few similarities and a greater amount of contrast between the two. These are especially true when looking at the stories that were covered, the amount of space some stories took compared to others, and the slants many of the headlines took.

During this week I investigated many different news sources and different tactics they use. My research has shown the incredibly strong bias that the media has. To get a full grasp of the biases I had to use source diversity. My sources ranged from social media, to television, to web-based articles. Through my research, I discovered the effective and prevalent uses of loaded language, social media, sensationalism, bias in quotes, and the role of gatekeepers in media.

(USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the

In a contemporary society, the role of journalism is a varied one that covers many different aspects of people’s lives. As more and more outlets spring up around the world, many more stories are able to be covered by different outlets, and this means that journalism takes on a more and more important role in a contemporary society. Much of our lives centre on political and social happenings, and journalistic outlets are the public’s way of finding all the information on these event. Journalism also provides us with a way of finding out which of these stories are important and deserve our attention, and which stories can be ignored. The important role of journalism can be well observed in the recent coverage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) in both New Zealand and around the world. This is a ground breaking economic deal, and holds a great deal of importance for the 800 million citizens of the countries involved, as well as the rest of the world. With worldwide coverage of this deal, it is inevitable that different types of reporting occurs, and that different outlets will provide different accounts. With so many different journalism outlets around the world and locally, many have to have a way of standing out from the crowd. This means that some extremely different coverage of very similar stories can occur. However it can also simply be down to different ownership, differing political views, and different socio-economic environments. Two outlets with