While the last post was a general overview of CNN.com’s website layout and design, future posts will be geared towards analyzing the site’s contents and the articles published.
The front page of the website shows “featured” articles and videos which, quite frankly, don’t seem very exciting. In a way, it does sort of wrap the U.S. up in a nutshell with its videos centered around celebrity life, reality television shows, and the ridiculous happenings of Americans. While some of the titles seem undoubtedly interesting (e.g. “Kids invite alligator to pool party”), other headlines seem like they’re just there to take up space (e.g. “Fan asks Underwood for first kiss” and “Jersey considers ‘Snookiville Law'”).
With the 2012 presidential election and the current heated battle between Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown and Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren, I decided to focus on CNN’s online politics section to see if there is any obvious and blatant bias in the articles CNN publishes on their site.
In the past, CNN has gotten into hot water for being both liberally biased and conservatively biased. Groups from both parties have accused CNN of showing bias for the other side.
Currently, the site shows a higher number of positive, pro-Obama articles and fewer pro-Romney articles and headlines. The editorial section of CNN Politics show a more diverse range of political views but still offer more support for liberal ideas.
For example, the latest news section includes Romney-related headlines such as “Reid calls Romney on their shared Mormon faith” and “Romney says he’s ‘kind of’ partisan” while the Obama-related headlines include positive articles such as “Obama: Every nation can tackle slavery”, “Obama talks tough on Mid East”, and “Obama warns Iran”. The Obama articles are undoubtedly more assertive and positive whereas the Romney headlines are somewhat odd and brings attention to Romney’s political and personal flaws.
The “political ticker” on the side column offers up-to-the-minute election and campaign updates. It shows when the most recent article was published. In this case, according to the ticker, the article “Romney returns to economic message in ad” was updated 2 hours and 45 minutes ago. While there are probably better ways to actively search for newer updates, CNN does provide this feature for those loyally following CNN politics.
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