Trump Transgender Toilet Trouble
The debate over which bathroom transgender individuals should use has been a pressing topic in news lately, especially since Trump has started in office. When Obama was still president, he established that schools should treat students according to the gender they identify with regarding use of the locker room and bathroom. Now, Trump is in the process of trying to appeal this law, saying that this issue should be dealt with different within a state, and that it is not a federal issue. Both Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/22/trump-administration-working-on-new-transgender-bathroom-directive.html) and CBS news (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-would-happen-if-trump-rolls-back-transgender-bathroom-directive/) cover this event, but the way in which the stacking, diction, and sources are portrayed within each article gives the reader a different perception of the event based on which article they read. After reading the Fox News article, the reader would believe that the transgender bathroom debate is truly a state issue. However, after reading the CBS article, one may believe that Trump issuing this debate to the states is wrong and will cause more turmoil than before.
When first looking at these articles, it is not extremely apparent that the articles have different stances. However, when looking closely, it is obvious that they do. Fox News chooses to focus on the idea that the transgender bathroom debate is truly an issue for the states to deal with individually. Even from the title, “Trump administration working on new transgender bathroom directive” we can see that this news source is with Trump. The title simply expresses that Trump is making a new law, which in no way makes Trump look like the bad guy in this situation. This is different than the title of the CBS article, “What would happen if Trump rolls back transgender bathroom directive?” The difference is slight, but it can be seen that this title implies that if this law were to be changed, people would see changes in society.
Looking more closely at the articles themselves, there are many instances of diction where the news source is obviously showing bias to one political party. For example, in the Fox News article, they keep highlighting the fact that Trump wants to make designating transgender individuals’ bathrooms a state issue. Throughout the whole article, they continue to go back to this. This shows that the news source believed it was important to mention the reason Trump is backing out of this law because having this reason behind him makes him look good to readers. One source used in this article also make a stance that this issue is one that needs change. The source is a letter from Sean Spicer that reads, “the directive ‘has given rise to significant litigation’ and administrators, parents and students ‘struggled’ to understand and implement the Obama ad.” This shows that the article is trying to make its readers believe that the original plan was negative anyways. Lastly, the stacking of this article significantly effects how the reader will interpreting the text. For example, the article starts by stating the change, then goes into how Trump feels about this topic, then talks about rights of students and how this is a state matter. This organization actually gives the reader a semi-good interpretation of the article I believe, because it is clearly worded and organized in a way that makes sense. It does not seem like there was supposed to be a method to persuade the reader or anything of that nature. However, the article lacks evidence from people of the other side that would further elaborate on such an important topic.
In the CBS news article, there is definitely bias shown as well. First of all, the source of Sean Spicer in this article is significantly different than the previous article. In this article, they go into far less detain regarding Spicer’s letter, saying “White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday the Justice Department is working on a new set of guidelines on bathroom access but offered no other details.” This shows that they failed to mention what Fox News mentioned for the purpose of eliminating the justification Spicer set for Trump’s action of removing this law. The diction of this article shows us that this news source believes that Trump is wrong with his decision. For example, the article continues to mention what Obama did, how it helped schools, and how it is vital to LGBT equality. These words written by CBS show that they believe removing this law is wrong, which is a biased viewpoint to have since it shows their opinion. The way this article is stacked shows this further. The article is split into three categories with questions at the beginning of each asking things like, “what could happen if the guidance is withdrawn?” Then they answer the questions with many negative results, showing that they do not agree with Trump’s decision.
Out of these two articles, I believe the CBS article is more biased. The way this article is stacked especially shows the hatred this news report has for Trump’s decision. They talk about all of the negative things that could happen if Trump eliminates this law, like that it will will make transgender students feel unsafe. This is obviously true, but the amount they elaborate shows that they truly feel the law should not be appealed. This is different than the Fox News article because this article may show bias in its sources and the repeat of Trump’s reason for his stance, but it’s stacking is in more of a factual matter. I believe that in general, the Fox News article is more factual, and therefor, less biased.
