StMU Research Scholars

Featuring Scholarly Research, Writing, and Media at St. Mary’s University

November 13, 2022

Real News or Fake News?

Since the invention of television in 1927, Americans have been gathering news and information that way rather than through newspapers. People continue to rely heavily on different news outlets to know what’s happening around them and the world. In recent years, these news outlets have become significantly influenced by politics and have allowed politics to influence and control what can and cannot be said and published by their news stations. Since the creation of news media, this issue of bias has always been a consideration. However, in recent years news outlets have reached extremist views where they allot most of their airtime and print space bashing other political views, especially between left and right wings, or Republicans and Democrats. Biased conservative and liberal television news stations spend their time attacking each other’s views to the point that some will lie to convince their audience to side with them the same fashion candidates in political races do. The two major television news stations that have been at the top of this widespread issue are Fox News and CNN. The media has become alarmingly partisan.

CNN & Fox News logos
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-fox-news-viewers-flip-cnn.html

 

Donald Trump telling someone they are “Fake News.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uROu8Vyr3gw

In 2016, the presidential race significantly affected what the news published, especially Fox News. The 2016 Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, spent countless hours during the presidential race trying to put down news outlets, newspapers, and journalists who anything he perceived to be negative and called what they were saying, “fake news.” The State University of New Jersey published an article that explains, “Donald Trump worked to discredit journalists throughout his presidency, labeling the mainstream media biased. His claims of “fake news” have caused large swaths of the public to lose trust in mainstream media.”1 Many people have lost their trust in major news outlets, especially Fox News, which are majorly conservative biased. Since Donald Trump won the election in 2016, Fox News has been pushing its extreme-right political views at a concerning rate. Fox News has fed false information to its audience which is now comprised of primarily biased conservative people, especially during both of Trump’s elections. It appears as if Fox’s goal was to fill the Republican audience with hate towards the Democratic Party and encourage them to not change their opinions.2 Yochai Benkler spoke about this issue in an article in The Washington Post, “The conservative network of outlets, with Fox at its center, feeds a large minority of Americans narratives that confirm their biases, fills them with outrage at their political opponents, and isolates them from views that contradict these narratives.”3

Most of Fox News’ audience, many being Caucasian and a part of older generations, take the false information and spread it through social media, especially Facebook.4 After a survey was conducted, it was shown that 47% of Americans, almost half, say that Fox News is “mostly conservative,” and 48% of Fox News viewers agree.5  Fox News spends much of its time trying to convince its audience that Republican politicians are always correct, including everything they do and say, while bashing Democratic politicians and lying about many things democrats say or do.

During the pandemic in 2020, Tucker Carlson, a famous Fox News anchor, accused Anthony Fauci several times of making the pandemic bigger than it must be. In one of the Fox News broadcasts, Carlson spoke about Fauci saying, “He didn’t simply downplay and obfuscate the origins of the pandemic, apparently in conjunction with the Chinese government. No. Tony Fauci covered up evidence that he, Tony Fauci, helped create that virus in the first place.”6 Carlson has made various serious accusations like the one stated before about Fauci without fact-checking his statements. It seems to be that the majority of the topics Fox News covers are always given a political spin, especially if they position Joe Biden and any Democrat in a bad light. Sadly, some people will be influenced by these network news stories and blindly agree with their content, which leads to other problems creating a domino effect.

Attack on the Capitol by angry Trump supporters
https://www.virginiamercury.com /2022/07/21/jan-6-panel-to-detail-trumps-187-minutes-of-delay-as-insurrection-grew/

One of the contributing factors to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, days before Joe Biden’s inauguration as president, was the biased information provided by Fox News. Several Trump supporters were mad at the results of the 2020 election, and “the explanation for many was that the election must have been rigged, and the reaffirming social network was Fox News.”7 Many conservative Republicans marched into the Capitol because they were angry that their Republican candidate, Donald Trump, did not win the 2020 presidential election. What may have started as a peaceful demonstration turned into a hostile situation, with protesters starting a riot in an attempt to take over the Capital. The rioters were influenced by their goal of “stopping the election certification, based on unfounded conspiracy theories of widespread voter fraud.”8 If news stations continue spreading false information and continue to allow bias reporting strategies, circumstances like the attack on the Capital and many more will be repeated or done.

On the contrary, liberal news outlets have also been very biased in recent years. CNN is considered one of the news stations at the head of left-wing biased news outlets. The CNN news network heavily leans toward liberal views and opinions while trying to uncover and expose the misinformation shared by Fox News and Republican politicians. The time CNN spends attacking Fox News, makes many question CNN’s credibility, as well as Fox News’. Politics are an important topic in our lives, because they affect our daily life. We rely on news outlets for information about candidates, policies, and government regulations. When those news outlets only spend their time arguing with each other sharing their views and opinions, their honesty can be questioned. Phillip Meylan, a researcher, has said, “having a liberal bias does not disqualify CNN from producing factual news. CNN still publishes many factual articles.”9 Phillip challenges the idea of CNN having a biased left-wing news outlet but explains how that does not entirely discredit their honesty.

Democrats trust CNN as much as Republicans do Fox News https://morningconsult.com/2018/08/16/how-perceptions-news-accuracy-shift-with-outlet-topic/

Even though CNN has become extremely biased with liberal views, they do more fact-checking than other news stations, like Fox News. Whenever Fox News challenges liberal-influenced news, CNN downplays the situation to let their audience, most of whom are liberals, in the hopes that the audience will realize that everything is not as bad as it seems and not create panic. Fact-checking is an integral for news creation and news stations and networks should fact check every story to give their audience the most honest information without creating havoc. A study done in other countries that have this same issue has shown that “(radical) right-wing populist politicians are more likely to construct discourses of (un)truthfulness than mainstream politicians.” 10 This study proves that conservatively biased news stations are likelier to lie about the information they give their audiences. This issue causes many audience members to lose trust in the news they receive because only some things are fact-checked, and the news outlets are forcing their view of situations. While CNN might create uncertainty over the information they publish, they still have some integrity to fact-check what they put out, even when trying to attack opposing views which can develop a sense of untrustworthiness.11

All things considered, news outlets like CNN and Fox News have become politically influenced. While Fox News is highly conservative, CNN is hugely liberal, and both news stations continue to waste precious news time attacking each other and their views. These news outlets must take the time to fact-check what they publish to give their audience honest and trustworthy information. After a small poll in my class, I learned that ¾ of my peers use Apple News, which contains different media outlets. With the technological advancements in today’s society, several different narratives can be spread throughout the internet, and people need reliable sources. Americans should also consider looking into several news outlets before believing solely in a single one. Having factual information can prevent many devastating circumstances and unite Americans instead of keeping us divided.

  1. Intrabartola, Lisa. “How Trump Shaped the Media.” Rutgers University, January 19, 2021.
  2. DiMaggio, Anthony. Academic.oup.com, November 2019.
  3. Benkler, Yochai. “Perspective | the Russians Didn’t Swing the 2016 Election to Trump. but Fox News Might Have.” The Washington Post. WP Company, October 24, 2018.
  4. Waldman, Scott. “Facebook Fact Checker Has Ties to News Outlet That Promotes Climate Doubt.” Science, April 25, 2019.
  5. “Fox News Viewed as Most Ideological Network.” Pew Research Center – U.S. Politics & Policy. Pew Research Center, May 30, 2020.
  6. Cohen, Jon. “Almost Everything Tucker Carlson Said about Anthony Fauci This Week Was …,” August 25, 2022.
  7. Marshall, Lisa. “Republicans Lost Faith in 2020 Election Results. Fox News Played Pivotal Role.” CU Boulder Today, December 3, 2021.
  8. “The January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.” American Oversight, May 2, 2022.
  9. Meylan, Phillip. “Is CNN Biased? – the Factual: Blog.” The Factual | Blog, September 19, 2022.
  10. Hameleers, Michael, and Sophie Minihold. “Constructing Discourses on (Un)Truthfulness: Attributions of Reality, Misinformation, and Disinformation by Politicians in a Comparative Social Media Setting.” Communication Research 49, no. 8 (2020): pg. 1193.
  11. “The Truth about Fox ‘News’ ” The Hearyourselfthink Project.” The HearYourselfThink Project, August 22, 2019.

Tags from the story

election

news

news media

Recent Comments

Nicole Estrada

Congratulations on your nomination! I really enjoyed reading your article. I found it interesting on how the media can twist so many things and make many people believe them. Nowadays everyone gets there news or information from social media or their phones and because of that it is tough to determine if the news is real or fake. I thought your article was well written and appreciate you bringing awareness about this issue. As a political science major myself I can take the information you provided and apply it later on into my career. Overall great article!

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27/11/2022

5:09 pm

Elliot Avigael

Your article was concise and to the point, and I found it interesting to see that you took a phrase that has become a meme at this point (Fake News) and just ran with it. It’s amazing how partisan media has truly become. At least from my experience, Republicans tend to stick to their guns as far as media goes, and Democrats equally so. Rarely do you see a cross-discussion between two kinds of networks (like CNN or Fox for example) that have an incredibly staunch base that they desire to keep. News outlets will tell their base what they want to hear, and it’s only up to us to decide whether or not it’s the truth.

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16/01/2023

5:09 pm

Hailey Koch

Congratulations on your article, I loved reading it! It opened my eyes to the news and the politics that have come about in recent years. I don’t watch the news too often, but when I do I’ve seen a major change from years past. I remember hearing about the “fake news” but never really knew much about it. After reading your article I now have a better understanding that at first Trump said Fox News was spreading fake news and then it became a real thing. After Trump had influenced the “fake news” it’s crazy how it then became a real thing that Fox news put out to the world, which had started tension between political parties.

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17/01/2023

5:09 pm

Alexandra Ballard

Congratulations on your award! I enjoyed this article. At first, I thought you were only going to address the misinformation in republican dominated news sources but was very relieved to see that you would address both. I think it’s so important to realize a lot of mainstream “news” is often not news and is in fact propaganda. You bring up some very interesting points about how we are obtaining news in the modern age.

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29/01/2023

5:09 pm

Muhammad Hammad Zafar

First of all, I would say that I really enjoyed reading your article. because it’s factual that how the media can turn and change certain things from its actual position to get people believe it. Nowadays, social media has changed the way of our thinking because with one click, we are able to know more of our surrounding and literal thing is that we are believing it which means that we are being brainwashed and are considering every information as valid. And most of the time everyone will believe it. The conclusion is that we are becoming servants of social media. I really enjoyed reading your article. I like reading articles which has a message for the current society.

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31/01/2023

5:09 pm

Abbey Stiffler

To start congrats on your article being nominated. I agree that most of our news channels are politically biased. They tend to normally favor one side or the other. I don’t agree with this because then they can exaggerate stories to fit their ideas and opinions. I love how you brought u fact-checking because there is so much false info out there in our electronically-based world it is hard to tell what is what.

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05/02/2023

5:09 pm

Iris Reyna

Congrats Fatima on winning the Fall 2022 Award in the category of Political History. The article was very informative and educational and was put together nicely. It’s baffling to see how news outlets can be altered to please a certain audience. I know that I’m probably not the person to ask about the news outlets due to me finding and hearing my news from social media outlets, I do in fact check when headline news hits the social media platforms. I liked how you mentioned fact-checking because that is what all people should do because we really don’t know what is Fake or Real News.

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26/02/2023

5:09 pm

Karly West

I just wanted to start off by congratulating you on your award! I understand why you got it, this was a very interesting article. It’s so interesting how the media has bias and can alter public perception because of favoritism. News outlets are no longer becoming “news”, it is slowly becoming opinions disguised as facts that serve as propaganda. I love the inclusion of Trumps “fake news” slogan because he has single-handedly altered public opinion of Fox News, dubbing them as unreliable sources.

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19/03/2023

5:09 pm

Carina Martinez

Wow, I did not realize how the media has been affected by the Trump presidency. You wrote this clearly, well done! Congratulations on your award.

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08/05/2023

5:09 pm

Xavier Bohorquez

Congratulations on your article being Awarded for best in the Political History department. The attention and interpretation of fake news is something that I love to learn about and by the way you organized your information to favor your argument. It’s something definitely worth an award.

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12/05/2023

5:09 pm

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