An Experiment in Understanding

Recently I posted a note on Facebook (and also on a forum I frequent) concerning partial news reporting. That note is as follows:

Observation: I was watching the news and a contributor (not a reporter) made a statement to the effect of, "Obama stayed out of most of the budget debate that has been going on and has only gotten really involved at the very end." This statement is a fact. The reporter interviewing the contributor then said something to the effect of, "I agree with you that Obama should have gotten more involved earlier in this debate." This statement is an opinion. So, here's the question: Should a reporter state so blatant an opinion, or am I wrong in my analysis?

On Facebook I got one response from my wife and one response from a friend basically agreeing with me. On the forum I frequent I posted this (with a few changes from the original):

Observation: I was watching the news and a contributor (not a reporter) made a statement to the effect of, "Obama stayed out of most of the budget debate that has been going on and has only gotten really involved at the very end." This statement is a fact. The reporter interviewing the contributor then said something to the effect of, "I agree with you that Obama should have gotten more involved earlier in this debate." This statement is an opinion.

It very well might have been the contributor's opinion that Obama should have gotten involved earlier. However, that is not what the contributor said. I, for one, appreciate when a reporter focuses on fact rather than opinion. So, for me, while this tangentially is related to the budget issue, I've noticed that reporters do this on occasion (on all news channels) and it drives me CRAZY! Am I correct in my analysis? And, if so, am I justified in being frustrated by it? And, does this warrant a whole 'nother thread?

To this post (in a thread about the budget debate) I got no responses. The thread wasn't touched for a few days and then it picked up again talking about something else entirely. Maybe I should create another thread and try again.

But that is neither here nor there.

Really this whole experience has got me thinking. And so with no prior research I am going to try an experiment. As I am writing this I am going to research Obama's speech that he made at the 11th hour about the budget compromise. Then I'm going to locate a few news articles about his speech (my plan is to find one from CNN, one from Fox News, and one from the BBC). Then I'm going to see how much of these news articles are honest reporting, opinion, a mixture of the two, or something else entirely. This will all be done real-time with little proofreading (I apologize in advance).

First, Obama's Speech. Hopefully I will be quoting sections of this speech in my experiment but I wanted to link to the speech in its entirety for all to see.

Now to find my articles. After much searching (the only website that allowed me to search by date was the BBC) I found three articles published the day after the budget agreement. These are all news articles as opposed to opinion articles or even blogs.

CNN
Fox News
BBC

I have only made cursory glances at these articles to ensure that they were related to the topic. Now I will proceed to look at them more in depth.

Obama's Speech:

I'm going to point out a few things that I noticed in this speech. Obama is a politician so I have noticed that he plays that part well.

He begins his speech talking about the Washington Monument and seeks to hook us in with pretty words (this is effective and speech writers have been doing this since the advent of speech, I'm sure, so there is no fault with this). He continues by discussing what has happened and what will happen; the government was in danger of being shut down but it won't because both parties came together (these statements are fact and can't be disputed so I find no fault there).

The next portion of his speech talks about the painful parts of this budget compromise. He talks about this being the "largest annual spending cut in our history" and also about how he "would not have made these cuts in better circumstances." These are all facts in that they are true statements about how Obama actually feels about this budget agreement.

He then makes a comment that can be interpreted a few different ways. He says, "[W]e also made sure that at the end of the day, this was a debate about spending cuts, not social issues like women’s health and the protection of our air and water." During the budget talks there was a lot of discussion about how Boehner was saying that this was strictly about money while several Democrats were saying that the Republicans were making this about Planned Parenthood (a social issue, definitely not a spending cuts issue in their opinion (I will not go into whether the Republicans believe that Planned Parenthood is a spending cuts issue, a social issue, or both)). So Obama was either telling all those Democrats to back off because the Republicans were just talking about social issues, or he is making a slight jab at the Republicans for trying to make the budget debate about social issues.

As he starts to wrap up he thanks Boehner and Reid for their help and talks about how bipartisanship is the way forward. There is one sentence that I find rather interesting, though. "Now the same cooperation will make possible the biggest annual spending cut in history..." This is a very happy sentence. However, a few paragraphs before he talked about how he "would not have made these cuts in better circumstances." This speech has now turned a little more political. On one hand he can talk about he fought these cuts but had to concede because he didn't have a majority, and with the other he can laud how he brought everyone together to perform the BIGGEST ANNUAL SPENDING CUTS IN HISTORY! which sounds AWESOME!! Man, is this guy the best of both worlds, or what? Well, as I mentioned before Obama is a politician (shocker) and as a favorite movie quote of mine goes, "I'm a politician, which means that when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops." So, all in all, Obama is still just being himself (or something).

Finally he wraps up with a story about a class field trip to the capitol that wouldn't have happened had not the Washington establishment come together and solved this problem. Just as Obama has started his speech he ends it with something seeking to integrate himself with the audience (all speechwriters do this and, much like the hook at the beginning, I guess we just have to live with it, or something (also, I might be using "or something" too much, but I use "or something" too much in real life, so there)).

Now I'm going to go into the news articles. Wow, this is taking a lot more energy than I thought.

CNN:

On first read the article seems quite well written. It sticks to facts and statements made. Obama is quoted as saying, "This is an agreement to invest in our country's future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history." which is a statement that can be taken as saying either, "[Something good] while making [something bad]" or, "[Something good] while [something also good]." But the article just quotes Obama word for word without explanation, letting the reader interpret it as they may (I find this good (read as "unbiased") reporting and bad (read as "usual") politics).

Now that we look a little closer at the article I would like to quote, in my opinion, positive (or maybe at least neutral) statements about the Republican party specifically.

"Republicans fought to "create a better environment for job creators in our country."" Quote by Boehner. [This statement can be seen as negative because the writer saw the need to directly quote Boehner thereby removing himself (the writer) further from the subject at hand]

"Sources told CNN, however, that leaders of the Democratic-controlled Senate agreed to hold separate votes on both measures, as well as on an initiative to repeal Obama's health care overhaul." [This is something that Republicans have fought to get and so this is a victory for the Republicans]

""It's the first big step in the right direction," said Gingrich, a possible Republican presidential candidate, of Friday night's legislation. "John Boehner got the largest spending cut in history.""[I don't find these quotes as offensive as the previous quotes because full sentences are used]

"Republicans, under pressure from the conservative Tea Party movement to reduce the size of government, blame Democrats for failing to pass a fiscal year 2011 budget last year when they controlled both the Senate and the House. They also say Obama and his party are ignoring the peril of rising federal deficits and the national debt."

"Levi Russell, a spokesman for the Tea Party Express, told CNN the group isn't "very impressed" with the budget deal and said the agreement proves the party has a lot more work to do to ensure deeper cuts." [This is more of a neutral statement, but it doesn't go very far in the article so the writer can't show very much how he feels about this specifically]

Now I would like to look at quotes that see the Republican party, specifically, in a negative light (in my opinion).

"A GOP push to strip $317 million in federal funding from Planned Parenthood failed. Democrats also turned back Republican attempts to get federal dollars currently set aside for family planning and women's health turned into block grants for states." [This is quoted as the first big "partisan" issue of the debates, meaning that of all the individual budget cutting prospects, this is the issue that is most important to Republicans. More on this later.]

"Such a move would have given governors and state legislatures more ability to cut funding for services opposed by conservatives." [This is a continuation of the previous quote and points out that, if I am reading this correctly, the move proposed would have meant that governors would have ability to cut funding for services opposed by conservatives, BUT NOTHING ELSE. I think that what was really meant to be said was that conservative governors and conservative state legislatures would have more ability to cut funding for services opposed by conservatives. Liberal governors and liberal state legislatures would have been able to set aside the block grants for family planning and women's health. But maybe the writer really did mean that the block grants would only be made available to states if they promised to use them for conservative purposes or something. Personally, I don't buy it. The truth as I see it is that if the states then had the control to use the money previously set aside for women's health and family planning, the states would use the money where they need it (and lots of states are in the red and that money would just be used to try to get out of the red and women's health is not a place to invest money, usually. In short, semantically, this is very shoddy reporting and paints conservatives (and, by association, Republicans) as concocting a scheme that takes all control away from all forms of government (federal and state) to help women's health and planned parenthood. I also suspect that those conservatives would like to point out that one of the big things they are trying to defeat is abortion and liberals would like to point out that abortion is only 3 percent of what planned parenthood does (which is a statistic I've heard). (On the other side I heard that planned parenthood provides something like 1/3 of all abortions, or something. For the record, both statistics could be correct, but I don't know if either statistic is correct, but that is neither here nor there). In short (too late) I hate these paragraphs because they stink. And I'm rambling. Continuing...]

"Democrats said the Republican drive to defund Planned Parenthood proves the GOP is fixated on abortion and other issues related to women's health. Republicans repeatedly insisted that the size of spending reductions was the main cause of the dispute in recent days." [The writer says that Democrats say this is about planned parenthood. Then the writer says that the Republicans insist that planned parenthood is not the main issue, except that the writer has already pointed out earlier that he believes that planned parenthood is, in fact, the main issue of the debates, thereby making the Republicans look like liars, or something. It's all very psychological, I believe, without being straightforward; like a backhanded compliment.]

Then the reporter ends with the final kick:

"Planned Parenthood claimed victory for American women. "A handful of members of Congress tried to use the debate over our nation's deficit to pursue an extreme agenda that would cut millions of women off from Pap tests, breast exams and birth control -- without reducing the deficit," said President Cecile Richards."

So, basically, the writer has started talking about the heavy partisanship focusing on planned parenthood. Then he made a small comment about how the Republicans don't believe that's the main issue (or at least that's what they've SAID). Then he wraps it up nicely by focusing back on planned parenthood.

On first read, this article seemed fine. On a more in-depth study I think CNN sucks.

And now I'm just tired and angry and hate shoddy news. I'll write about how CNN treats the Democrats later (or maybe I won't because this took a LOT longer than I thought) and then maybe I'll look at the other two articles even later than that (or not, or something).

I would like to point out again that this has been an experiment and that I haven't done much editing of this and everything has come out as I've researched it and thought it so I apologize for any typos (not capitalizing "Planned Parenthood" all over the place, for one).

Good night.