In the United States, we mostly think about politics in terms of Republicans vs. Democrats. Then there are a handful of smaller groups that most people have at least heard about once or twice– Independents, Libertarians, and Green Party, maybe.  Some news sites are generally agreed upon to lean toward one major party (Fox News and Republicans) or the other (MSNBC and Democrats).

However, there is so much more to politics, and to political news, than Republicans vs. Democrats! Within each party, there are competing factions who want different things. For the Democrats, you can see more moderate Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, the “progressives” (like AOC), and then people who are even further leftwing who normally don’t like the Democrats, but got involved in Democratic party politics through the Bernie Sanders campaign. Then you have people who generally agree with one major party on some things but the other party on other things. And an article doesn’t have to directly support one party or politician to still take a political perspective.

“Politics” also doesn’t have to be explicitly about parties and politicians, though. It can be the approaches that news agencies implicitly take toward different social or economic issues, or the values they explicitly or implicitly promote. Or it can be about what they even agree to cover. Now, you’ll see news about LGBTQ+ issues in major news sources– and not just negative stuff. But it used to be a lot less common, and until the 21st century, you probably had to look for a gay-specific magazine unless you were trying to read about HIV/AIDS. That shift is political!

I looked at the front page of Fox News and marked the words that immediately struck me as indicative of a political perspective:

Often, news agencies will use the word “claims” when they want readers to remain at least a little bit skeptical about whether or not the claims are true. “Ambush-style” tells me that whatever happened wasn’t literally an ambush, but they chose that word instead of a more neutral one, like “surprise.” They want the reader to think that whatever happened was Bad. Given the context of the Lebron James headline, I don’t think he was literally crying, so that word choice tells us that Lebron said something in a very upset way. Again, they could have chosen a more neutral word like “complaining about” or “saying.” I kind of think that anytime someone uses a word other than “says” or “states” or “reported,” or something like that, the word they choose is probably revealing some kind of bias.

As for the headline about the cartoon, a controversial cartoon in school COULD be evidence of brainwashing, but brainwashing is also much bigger/more complicated than showing materials that have a particular perspective. (Personally, my guess is that they were doing a lesson about political cartoons, but I did not click on the article to find out.)

I also marked the entire headline about the NYPD lieutenant recovering from the coronavirus. Because there are several other headlines about police (and in more politically-charged contexts) on the front page, this caught my interest. I read it as them saying, “This person was ill for a long time with the virus, but also, look, we are a publication that cares about publishing positive things about cops during a time when people are saying a lot of negative things about cops.”

Now let’s look at MSNBC.

Here, we see a story about the same event in LA, but here they describe it as two officers “being shot,” rather than an “ambush-style” event. There’s a caption that says “Consummate Liar” above a story about Trump, suggesting that Trump is the liar. There’s a bullet point about “fact-checking Rudy Giuliani.” It doesn’t actually tell us whether Giuliani was lying or not, but the phrasing still suggests that maybe he did lie. MSNBC included a story about police brutality, as opposed to something like the story about the officer recovering from coronavirus or the one about the anti-cop cartoon. The other Giuliani headline raises the question that maybe Giuliani is interfering in the election. And anytime a news agency calls something “taxpayer-funded,” they are probably suggesting that taxpayers should be mad about this use of their money. I also marked Mike Pompeo’s face, as I marked the face of someone on the Fox News page. Both pictures show the person looking upset, rather than choosing a neutral or positive image– a choice which matches the implications of the headlines. I also noticed that MSNBC talks about the fires, while Fox News does not. The fires in California don’t seem to be particularly political — it’s a fact! California is on fire and it’s scary and bad! Yet whether or not to include it on the front page is still an editorial decision that was shaped by something.

Let’s practice looking for how word choice shapes the political perspective offered by an article by annotating a few different pieces together. Please mark any word/phrase that strikes you as subtly telling us what we ought to think about the topic, just like I did with the front pages above. What specifically does each journalist want us to think about different aspects of the topic, and how do you know? How could you rephrase the same sentence to convey the same information while offering a different perspective?

You’re not just looking for what the article thinks about the main idea, but what it wants us to think about different ideas, people, and decisions mentioned within the article.

I have chosen 3 articles about NYC public schools reopening for hybrid learning this fall.

1. Article about NYC Teachers (Not) Going On Strike
2. Article about Unions and Reopening
3. Article about NYC Schools and PPE

Please mark them up in Hypothes.is, and feel free to respond to each other’s annotations!