Who is to Blame? Coronavirus Deaths and the Media
When I was looking for information on covid-19 deaths, I came across two news articles with opposing controversial viewpoints on the situation. USAToday and Breitbart both used diction, sourcing, and confirmation bias to make certain politicians look bad, and to persuade the readers to agree with their opinions.
In the article by USAToday titled “‘Blood on his hands’: As US surpasses 400,000 COVID-19 deaths, experts blame Trump administration for a ‘preventable’ loss of life”, right from the title of the article readers are meant to interpret the covid deaths as if Trump himself had murdered these people. The diction used, “Blood on his hands”, leaves readers with the impression that Trump is not a good person and he directly caused the deaths of 400,000 people. Sourcing from health expert Dr. Steven states, “This is an infectious disease we knew how to prevent, and as difficult as it is, far easier to solve than defeating Nazi Germany. And yet, we did not mount a response to wage war against this virus as we have in these other situations.” This health expert doesn’t mention how we would prevent the pandemic, and also fails to mention how we could defeat the coronavirus in this article. The article reinforces the idea that Trump could have prevented the coronavirus from happening which is an example of confirmation bias to readers who dislike Trump or his handling of the pandemic.
The article by Breitbart titled “Over 161,000 in U.S. Died from Coronavirus in Biden’s First 11 Weeks in Office”, uses confirmation bias and certain diction that can make the reader feel as if Biden is to blame for all the new covid deaths and cases. Within the article it is stated, “Now, as Biden completes his eleventh week — just shy of his third month in office — the nation has suffered a total of 558,956 coronavirus-related deaths.” The article compares Biden and the amount of months he’s been in office to the amount of covid deaths and cases. This example of confirmation bias reinforces the belief that Biden is a poor leader. The phrasing and diction used sets the idea that Biden is to blame for all the recent Covid deaths. The article also uses diction by referring to coronavirus as Wuhan and Chinese virus which causes further division of the relationship between US and China.
Overall, to blame a single person for all the deaths caused from a pandemic and to not list any of the accomplishments seems very unfair and like a simple way to make a leader look bad. The comparisons used in these articles can lead people to be single minded and think completely negatively about a certain person. The articles both fail to mention any of the accomplishments our leaders have made in the fight against the pandemic. The USAToday article mentions all negatives of Trump and not one positive action he has taken. On the other hand the Breitbart article didn’t mention a single achievement Biden made against the COVID pandemic. Readers should learn to see through the bias to get the facts of a certain news event so as to not get stuck in the single minded echo chamber that these articles promote.
