Well, we made it to the end of a historical week. New President and New Semester!
This week, a couple articles really grabbed my attention. You’ll notice they are primarily national news, but it was a big deal this week. Next week, we’ll narrow in on some more local journalism.
The first article for this week is a political piece published by the Washington Post on Jan. 20, 2021, titled: Trump’s final day: A diminished and aggrieved president stays out of public view before exit
This article goes in to some detail on how Trump had spent the weeks prior to this day as well. Seeing it all condensed, paragraph after paragraph, painted a really clear picture. I think journalism like this is powerful because it lays all the facts out without argument, and I thought it did a good job fairly representing both sides while not being attacking. It did have some hurtful truths but I thought it presented them in an inarguable and fair way. I thought it explained some of the reasoning behind the actions as well, which makes it a more easily digested article.
The next article that really caught my eye was The Washington Post’s piece titled: At Fox News, a post-election shake-up brings more opinion at the expense of the news
This piece had some really concerning facts for me. I have discredited Fox News for a while, yeah that’s right I said it, but this was really the icing on the cake for me. So, basically, Fox News is replacing it’s 7pm news hour, a prime time spot, with more opinion segments. This makes Fox “News” a network that evenly balances news and entertainment programs. Well, technically, but one of their so called news programs is actually a panel show that does segments on culture-war topics and is only called a news show because the lead panelist was a news anchor.
one quote really stood out to me:
“They want to restore their conservative base. They’re going to serve the people who brought them to the dance,” said Carl Cameron, who spent 22 years as a reporter for Fox News before retiring as the network’s chief political correspondent in 2017. “Conservatives are going to want to hear what’s wrong with Joe Biden. It’s easier for Fox to beat Newsmax and everybody else back into the woods than it is for them to try to compete with the real journalism networks.”
For me, I think this article speaks to America’s shift into polarization and willingness to believe in confirmation bias, as well as a greater trend in News. It is scary to me to see such a popular network do this with no consequences.
So those are some of my thoughts on journalism this week. Next week will be more local centered and feature two GA shifts! Stay tuned for more updates and stay awesome folks.