Clickbait, fake news, lies, biases, hoaxes, etc., have drowned out clear, trustworthy, and un-bias news sources more than ever in the past few years. With the exponential growth in media, especially Facebook, the sharing of “facts” or clickbait-articles has left people exhausted. How do we know whom to trust? We don’t, is the answer. It is our own obligation as US citizens to do our own research and take various sources into consideration when trying to get a gasp on what is going on in this world.
To understand if news is trustworthy, something I always try identifying is if the information that is being presented to me objective or subjective.
Saying “these are oranges” is a fact (objective), contrary, saying “I love oranges” is an opinion (subjective). While it is very important for everyone to have their own opinion and it is a constitutional right for them to express their opinion, it is problematic, especially in news, when opinion is stated as a fact. This is why contextualizing news articles is so important.
Important questions: Who/what is my source? Is this opinion or fact? If it is fact where can I find the proof or research? Do other new articles support the same statements?
To add, spg.org claims that “Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity”
The four principals that stand as the foundation of ethical journalism are: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent,
By conducting my ethical analysis, the SPJ Code of Ethics is going to be something I am going to keep in mind the entire time while reading the journalists’ work.
CNN (left) and Fox News (right) both came out with a news article on October 20th regarding statements from the president talking about birthright citizenship. I wanted to contextualize CNN’s “Trump claims he can defy Constitution and end birthright citizenship” and Fox’s “Trump plans to sign executive order curbing birthright citizenship” reports because they are news stations on the opposite side of the spectrum from each other. I found that running an ethical analysis is best done after reading and researching on the topic from various different sources. This helps identify: information that may stand out as misleading, facts that do not match outside sources, and journalists’ biases and opinions.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” – The 14th Amendment
This topic is very concerning and important because the president of the United States is vowing to make a change that goes against the constitution. Our government system was set up specifically to avoid having any one person obtaining dominating power over the people. Nobody, not even the president, is above the law. Therefore, hearing things in the news concerning our president promising to change the constitution is definitely a controversial topic being reported all over the media. His intentions are to change this law, so that if undocumented or illegal aliens give birth on U.S soil, it does not mean their babies become U.S citizens.
Wikipedia claims that altering the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments and subsequent ratification. Thus, amendments may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a convention of states called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures.
For the record, this did not come out of left field. Democrat Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader, suggested revoking birthright citizenship in 1993. Vanity Fair says “The current legal argument for revoking birthright citizenship, which had percolated on the left and right in the 90s, began gaining traction in 2006, when John C. Eastman, a Claremont Institute affiliate who is a professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, published an article for the Heritage Foundation laying out a three-point argument to challenge the authority of birthright citizenship.” The controversy of the 14th Amendment and the wording of how the law is written has had people talking for decades.
CNN started the article by providing video proof taken from the interview Trump had with Axios released Tuesday morning. To make sure nothing was taken out of context, I researched the video on various different platforms. Thus, the video was not taken out of context and President Trump very clearly stated what the CNN article was claiming he stated.
In the Fox article, there was a video that started the article off as well. This video stated the 14th Amendment, and then went on to have two different opinions contextual it’s meaning. Michael Anton, Former Deputy National Security, explains the loophole he has found in the wording, which he believes the way the amendment is being interpreted is incorrect. Quite the contrary, Judge James Ho disagrees with Michael Anton’s opinion. The video ended with Judge James Ho saying changing the law would be unconstitutional. Fox opened their article by already debating the controversy. Although both articles took different approaches to introducing their audience to the topic, they both stuck to the facts regardless of their personal opinions.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said in an interview for “Axios on HBO.”
Both articles reported Trump saying this, and in turn, both articles supported facts that disproved the president’s statement. It is ironic that our president is the one who tried using false information to support his argument, but thankfully both journalists did their job by giving the people the factual truth.
“The Pentagon announced it would deploy some 5,200 troops to the southern border in what the commander of U.S. Northern Command described as an effort to “harden the southern border” by stiffening defenses at and near legal entry points.”– CNN and Fox
Both articles reported the same facts, which is reassuring to see proper background information given to the public by huge news stations regardless of their political views.
CNN news article had quotes from majority of people who blatantly disagree with Trump. Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project defended the law and claimed “this is a transparent and blatantly unconstitutional attempt to sow division and fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms.” So while CNN journalist did not voice their own opinion, but they did pull most opinions, like this, that sided against president Trump. In the most fair and un-bias articles, playing devil’s advocate gives the reader a fair opportunity to decide which opinion they swing towards.
Although the choice of words and tone slightly vary between the two articles, they both stick to the facts without taking anything out of context. If anyone read the two articles without knowing what the source was, I believe because of the innocent touch of bias tone could help the reader indicate which source each article came from. However, it did not take away from the honesty of the article–for the most part the journalists did their job with integrity. All of their statements were researched and appeared to be true. The SPJ code of ethics were followed by both journalists, and they effectively both informed the people.
For the most honest, straight forward, and un-bias article, view Axios. All voices and opinions are heard, the facts are strictly objective, there is enough content to clearly contextualize the topic, and both sides of the arguments are made without the journalist choosing a side.
karlymac 