That’s Like Your Opinion Man
After submitting my proposed blog topic, the media focus of the 2020 Presidential Election, it was suggested that narrowing down this broad topic would be more beneficial to effective composition (than you Agya Aning). Thus, I still intend to frame the blog topic under the same media analysis of the 2020 Presidential Election subject, but I will focus on a specific policy that will likely be presented or discussed by several candidates. In this case, healthcare is a key issue that will be argued about and agreed on by several of the potential candidates throughout the primary and general election process.
Here I will present 4 online news items referencing the aforementioned topic, both as analysis and as opinion. I will attempt to explain the justification for assigning the label to each news piece:
Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan, explained
The article attempts to present an analysis of returning presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed medical bill. The bill offers a plan to adopt an American single-payer healthcare plan. The article presents the issue from a neutral standpoint and the author makes an attempt to present facts surrounding the controversial plan. Although I do consider this article to be devoid of opinion, the content carefully straddles the line between the two sides by presenting information that is objectively true, albeit causing an emotional response by some partisan readers.
This particular article was published by Vox on April 10, 2019, in their self owned and independently operated website. Vox is known to be a source of both news and opinion pieces, although this article makes a valid attempt to display only the facts and displays examples of bipartisan viewpoints of the subject.
Why This Joe Biden Health Care Ad Stands Out
This article is clearly an opinion piece in that it does less to present the facts about any specific healthcare plan, but it more clearly attempts to create a narrative of why Joe Biden is the most fit of all candidates for a Democratic presidential bid. The article never really gives any specific details about Biden’s potential healthcare plan, but it does present emotional responses to the commercial produced by the Biden campaign with statements detailing Biden’s own personal grief and loss due to his family’s health issues.
Although this article was written by the often trusted news source The New York Times, the left-leaning publication shows its true establishment bias in this article. The article was not meant to be news analysis in that it does not present objective facts that are widely agreed upon. Furthermore, the emotional language in the article is meant to offer an opinion of the author.
Bernie Sanders says his $40 trillion Medicare-for-all plan would help US save money
This article is presented as a factual analysis of the proposed healthcare policy offered by both presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. In truth, this article is arranged in such a way that it is truly an opinion piece that both details and describes the policy plans, while simultaneously offering a negative narration of the details.
It is widely known that the publishers of this article, Fox News, are right-leaning mouthpieces of conservative opinions. I am aware that my own confirmation bias was heavy in my reading of this article, but the way the article is framed clearly creates an attempt to push forward subjective opinions. The article has various examples of negative readings of the candidate’s healthcare proposals, but it even leaves the readers with a final quote of contestable facts.
Where all the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates stand on health care
This article was a little more difficult for me to determine its primary narrative and voice. The article gives very little insight into the intent of the piece but instead seeks to show the reader each individual candidate’s viewpoint and proposed policy. It is nearly impossible to determine if and when any news article is attempting to inject its opinion, but because the article’s main goal is to offer individual bullet points into every candidate’s platform, I am considering this an analysis piece.
The publisher, CBS News, comes from a long line of trusted legacy media producers that are largely effective in producing neutral news content. The article does very little to offer an opinion but instead goes directly into a few key features of all candidate’s platform positions. It does not offer its own subjective interpretation of the content but instead presents equal amounts of objective analysis to the reader.
