The Daily Wire, Fox News, Hot Air, & PJ Media. Perhaps you’ve heard of at least two of these news sites before. The Daily Wire and Fox News many Americans find themselves at least aware of in the current news climate, while Hot Air and PJ Media are more niche, something people may find themselves reading when already reading news on other conservative news outlets.
However, from my observation, there lies an issue with these news outlets: all four of them are heavily biased to the point where they end up inaccurate. This also isn’t just with the right; there are many left wing news sites that also exaggerate and require fact checking such as Vox, Slate, and MSNBC. It is only human nature to agree with a news source that already states what we want to believe, but we need to overcome this mindset if we want to strive for accurate news.
To showcase this, let’s take a look at two ends of the spectrum, The Jacobin, and Fox & Friends. The Jacobin says that it is a “leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.” While Fox & Friends says that “Ainsley Earhardt, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Lawrence Jones report on famous faces, health, politics & news you can use.”
Both outlets have been labeled as hyper-partisan through a number of factors, one liberal and one conservative, by Ad Fontes Media. It is also important to note that Fox & Friends is an extension of Fox News, but has been deemed separate and includes a separate bias report from Ad Fontes Media.
The Jacobin & Fox have both reported on ICE. On July 29th, Fox & Friends published an article titled “Trump border czar defends ICE against ‘false narrative’ as poll flags voters’ deportation concerns.” The Jacobin has an article from February 3rd titled “Donald Trump’s Deportations Threaten US Citizens’ Rights.”
Fox’s article focuses specifically on their polling done about voters’ concerns on deportation and how Tom Homan tries to reassure voters that they are doing exactly what ICE is setting out to do. In the article, Homan says, “70% of the people we’re arresting are criminals. Who are the other 30%? national security threats. We’ve arrested over 300 Iranian nationals. These are people who are a national security threat based on intelligence, based on other information.”
These statistics, according to the American Immigration Council, are inaccurate, but the article doesn’t address it. In fact, Fox & Friends links to another article covering what Tom Homan has said about anti-ICE protesters. In the first article, the polling was done by the network without citing any independent sources. Fox’s polling also samples only 1,000 voters from July 18-21. While their poll can give a general idea on how the public feels, the poll took from such a small pool that it is likely to get skewed results.
Data from Pew Research Center is likely more accurate due to the much larger size in poll data and just how much different data about the subject matter that they got. The data is over 5 pages total, and Fox included a much smaller amount of survey questions included in their data. Having only 1,000 random voters chosen also means that there is a much more likely chance that certain demographics will not have a fair representation of how they feel on the matter.
Outside of Fox’s polling done for this article, the language Homan uses to describe immigrants can be seen as harmful and purposefully fearmongering by calling them “criminals & national security threats.” By calling illegal immigrants “criminals,” Homan is ignoring the hard work these immigrants put into working hard in order to stay in the country. This ends up causing real world damage to immigrants as a whole, and it puts ethnic minorities in danger. Using language such as this often and carelessly paints a willfully ignorant view on immigration and immigrants as a whole.
On the flipside, Banco Marcetic’s February article for The Jacobin, “Donald Trump’s Deportations Threaten US Citizens’ Rights,” reviews multiple accounts of ICE patrols detaining both legal immigrants and American citizens. Multiple sources are cited within the article and it covers a variety of viewpoints; however, there are some potentially problematic quotes, particularly within the questions they pose.
Marcetic writes, “Are you comfortable with the federal government sending out thousands of armed officers who end up violating citizens’ basic rights, breaking US law, and creating a climate of fear in US communities that leads Americans to have to carry around papers when they leave the house?” and goes on to also say, “How long before the mass deportation program sees US citizens sent to the famously lawless ex–torture dungeons of that naval base?”
These stood out specifically because they are made to evoke an emotional response and should be approached with caution and awareness. The Slippery Slope fallacy creates a frightening narrative, that, if we start with this kind of behavior, then it will snowball into something worse. If the right is starting to throw immigrants into torture chambers, who knows what they might do next? It creates a narrative that the right, or those who support the actions from the right, are cruel and demonizes them.
The use of words like “lawless” and “torture dungeons” create more fear within the reader about what is happening and confirms negative views the reader may already have about Trump and those who support ICE’s current actions. While the questions themselves are not wrong to pose, using them in the article can be viewed as fearmongering, and fallacies ultimately dampen one’s argument and journalistic reliability.
While I do believe that left-winged sources have their problems, these news outlets just have fundamentally different ways of reporting on these matters. Fox & Friends pulled directly from someone directly involved with working with ICE, used limited voter polls to help support what they are saying, and used very strong language, while The Jacobin pulled from cases of real people being affected by the matter and used the article as a call to action.
Bias cannot be completely avoided, though. Bias ends up integrated into journalism as soon as the reporter decides what stories they want to cover and what stories they don’t. Media has a responsibility to rely on fact and to encourage people to understand and support fact by not treating false information as equally valid to factual information. If a journalist does not find correct information suiting their narrative, then they should instead find a new story and narrative to write about.
