CNN vs. FOX ---- "Remove The Stain Act"
Both news outlets, Fox News and CNN, covered the story of a new bill attempting to remove twenty medals of honor from deceased American soldiers that murdered upwards of 250 Lakota men, women, and children. Before I get in to the differences in content and what not, let me just give some context to the piece as well as to the news sources. Firstly, what happened in the Wounded Knee Massacre is a terrible black scar on American history, this opinion is held by both news sources as by myself. While the facts are not entirely square as to what exactly happened, we do know that twenty American soldiers received medals of honor, the highest award for service members, for murdering many unarmed Lakota civilians. This was the last 'battle' of the Indian wars. The soldiers were ordered to disarm the Lakota men of their weapons and ultimately to stop Chief Big Foot from performing his religious dance, the Ghost Dance. Though, the cause of this massacre is shaky. Some attribute it to a gun accidentally firing, and others think a deaf Lakota man wouldn't hand over his weapon.
Now for the news outlets themselves. Fox News is commonly known to be a more conservative outlet, contrasting the more liberal perspective shown through CNN. As a more liberal leaning person myself, I tend to read, watch, and listen to CNN more often. Though, I do try to get a healthy intake of diverse perspectives, so I try to watch Fox every once in a while. While differing parties shouldn't necessarily indicate differing views, I find that modern politics often results in the belief that people should adopt the traditional republican or democrat ideas across all matters. So, with this in mind, I was expecting the two different news sources to bare different opinions on this matter, though I was surprised when I found that they believed such the same thing. However, that isn't to say that they don't add their own touch on the piece with their different language.
I noticed how the two different sources immediately diverged based on who they choose to give credit to for the proposed bill. FOX News's headline doesn't quite attribute the bill to Elizabeth Warren, but it's implied through the vagueness surrounding the word, "introduces," as used in their title, "Elizabeth Warren introduces bill to revoke Medals of Honor awarded for Wounded Knee Massacre." This opposed to CNN, which gives more information, adding that the bill was actually proposed by three members of congress, including one of the first Native Americans to serve on Capitol Hill. Though it would appear to be the truth, the phrase, "one of the first," does provide room to negotiate with the truth, marking it as a weasel word. Despite both statements, in the literal sense, being true, the different associations provided by FOX and CNN through their language give off completely different vibes. So here we go again, down the rabbit hole of politics, call it crazy but for some reason unknown to me, the primarily liberal news station says the movement for the bill was started by a republican senator, while the primarily republican new station attributes the bill to democrats(three). Despite both mentioning Denny Heck, FOX called him a democrat and CNN called him a republican (what the heck?). Sure, what the heck, you could argue that the terms democrat and republican have actually been reified, and therefore, their connotative definition is interpretable, but that seems pretty damn weaselly to me. So there you go, FOX and CNN present the facts similarly but struggle to agree on who's doing the proposing and creating of the bill, which they argue/persuade through language. But wait, there's more!
Near the end of the Fox News article, the author uses a quote from Mike Rounds, the republican senator from North Dakota who said, "we're now guessing." Coupled with context, the author includes this to portray the other side of the argument, that revoking the medals might not be the move because more information is needed. Yet, this sloppy attempt at Ethos (showing both sides) is muted by its reliance on Vagueness surrounding the phrase as a whole, because, WHAT ARE THEY GUESSING??? We don't know what they're guessing, but I guess they are guessing something, huh?
One more little bit of sketchy language from CNN this time is also present at the end of their article. It references the bill itself to give more clarity to the actual situation, but if you analyze closely, it actually does quite the opposite. This reference is shown in, "the bill says that most of those killed were unarmed women and children." The word most, at least in my head, immediately painted the picture that almost all the Indians were women and children, but in fact, they could have numbered just one more than the men in the ceremony. Regardless of the confusion it caused for me, the event is a tragic part of the American story that should be condemned, not celebrated with medals
of honor, as said in the piece. (Hope you didn't jump to the end---if you didn't, you are a goat)
Skrrttt Skrrttt my Bloggin friendos
--Rexamus Nigel Yancey
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