Checkpoint 4

Hello, I'm back for my 4th Checkpoint blog post, today I will be talking about the media as a linkage institution and comparing the differences of two news sources, and one of their articles on the topic of Terrorism.

First off, some people may not realize that the media is a linkage institution. The definition of a linkage institution is "A structure within a society that connects the people to the government or centralized authority." , media falls directly under this definition because media directly connects users to the government of politics through articles/videos/surveys. Media is one of the largest linkage institutions because, nearly everyone in the United States has been exposed or uses media. The media plays a major role in elections/anything to do with voting. Media sources tend to be very politically biased, and they can use their platform to try and persuade users to think a certain way, and get them to vote for certain people/laws. The two news sources I chose to analyze are, CNN and Fox News. CNN is a very liberal news source which in turn means that its intended audience is primarily liberal. Fox News is a very conservative news source which in turn means that its intended audience is primarily conservative. The current event that I chose is the recent Texas Church shooting.

The first article I will go over is an article from CNN titled US leaders react to Texas church shooting. This article, as you might guess, is about the reactions of government officials to the mass shooting. In the article CNN quoted many officials statements about the shooting, and they also chose to quote mainly democrats who showed sympathy towards the victims and possibly added something in about how gun control could have helped and more legislation should be passed. This source is very biased when you read it carefully. There are many instances where the author adds things like “Trump said his ‘thoughts and prayers’ are with the victims and their families, but he did not suggest plans to take any legislative or other policy action to address the shooting”, which is basically them trying to say that trump doesn’t really care because he is not trying to change any laws. They also add statements from some house of representative members which are also pro-gun control. This article is written in a way that tries to convince people that guns are bad and that they should go out and try to get rid of guns. They fail to state that the shooter could not legally be in possession of a firearm due to the fact that he was dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, so more laws saying that he can’t have a gun wouldn’t have stopped him. They do cater to their normal readers who are primarily democrats. The majority of democrats are anti-gun and somehow believe that gun control would stop gun violence. There is a chance that this article could have influenced the readers to go out and protest guns, but if the readers get the facts or the case, there would be no reason to.

The next article I chose is from Fox News titled Texas church shooter Devin Patrick Kelley served in Air Force, was court-martialed for assaulting wife, child. The article describes information about his childhood, information on his abusive relationship with his wife and mother in law, and his time spent in the Air Force.  This article is also relevant to the issue I chose, since the purpose of the text is to educate the public on this current issue. I am also confident that the information given is both reliable and credible. Fox News is a large news outlet, and the majority of their evidence is from insiders and/or cited. Fox News tends to be pretty conservative, and it was easy to notice the conservative bias included within the information. The information presented itself is not bias, however, the way that the information is presented includes a little. The author tends to emphasize that the gunman has mental problems and could not legally be in possession of a firearm and tends to normally draw back to that point. The words they use to describe him have a very negative connotation, which draws me to my next point, rhetoric in the text. They use a very strong and critical tone when speaking of Kelley, which illustrates to readers how awful the act he committed was. This article is presented to Fox’s normal readers which are primarily conservative. You can tell this is meant to appeal to them because they do not try to convince them that more gun laws would have stopped this, but more that crazy people do crazy things. After both of these sources are read, it is good to realize that you should not only subject yourself to only one side of the story, it is best to take your time and get all of the story because media tends to be fairly biased and influential.