Agenda-Setting in Different News Sites
Despite their attempts to stay objective, many news sources end up swaying towards some sort of political bias. It’s no secret that Fox News is more conservative, while the New York Times is generally more liberal. However, can we see any explicit agenda-setting on the front pages of their respective websites?
First, we should define “agenda-setting.” This theory says that public opinion is altered by the media. In other words, what the media prioritizes will become public priority.
We can see an example of agenda-setting in the Wall Street Journal’s interactive graphic, “Blue Feed, Red Feed.” It shows how Facebook picks out different articles to show its users based on their political alignment. The selection of featured articles creates “echo chambers” on people’s Facebook feeds, causing them to prioritize stories related to their own political stance.
So, do the New York Times and Fox News set agendas of their own?
Let’s take a look at the front-page stories on the New York Times’ website on September 6:
We see two major news stories, as well as ten opinion headlines. The news stories are pretty much what one would expect to see in the news today: information about the president and information on a current natural disaster. Both of these issues affect large groups of people, so it makes sense to feature them on the website’s front page.
The opinion page is, unsurprisingly, where we can see bias starting to show more. While it’s obvious that opinions will be biased, there is an agenda clear in the pieces the Times chose to feature.
Opinion articles seen on the front page are anti-GOP and anti-Trump. They show clear left-leaning bias, while there are no conservative opinions on immediate display. This is where the objectivity of the New York Times as a whole fails. There is no diversity of opinion when you first enter the website.
Now, let’s take a look at Fox News:
Similar to the New York Times, Fox News is prioritizing information about Hurricane Dorian. However, while the bullet points the Times wrote under its Dorian headline were about wind speeds and deaths, Fox News writes about Sean Connery’s mansion and the financial damage in the Bahamas before they mention the death toll.
As we scroll further down the sites, the New York Times features more articles about the US government:
Meanwhile, when you scroll down on Fox News, this is what you see:
Sections titled “Eerie Video” and “Are You Kitten Me?” take away from any hard news that might be present in these pieces. It seems odd that these sensationalized stories are so largely labelled — and seemingly prioritized — in comparison to the stories below them, which detail a shooting, the FBI, and President Trump.
So, what agendas are being set here, if any?
It seems that the New York Times is pairing hard news about the government with liberal-leaning opinion pieces. This could be influencing its readers to think in the same way, politically.
On the other hand, Fox News prioritizes different parts of some similar news stories; it focuses more on the financial side of events. Also, the front page heavily features more “fun” stories such as kitten cloning, pushing down hard news. This could lead to readers of Fox News prioritizing certain hard news information less than those who get their news from other sources.
Overall, it’s safe to say that most news sites likely set agendas, whether it be immediately obvious or not. In the cases of the New York Times and Fox News, we can see this in political bias and front-page stories.
