Blog #4

Welcome back to my blog! In this episode, we are going to be talking about linkage institutions and the media.

The media is a linkage institution it connects the government to the people by holding them accountable, informing the people on what is going on with the government. The media affects the general public and the way they vote by covering or uncovering certain issues or candidates, the media can also choose how much it covers which affect the way people make their decisions to vote as the way they percept issues and the candidates is not 100% accurate.

The articles that I chose are from CNN  and Breitbart News. According to the Pew Research Center, CNN targets a more liberal audience and Breitbart News targets a more conservative audience.
The current event that I will be looking through these sources is the incident in the synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jews were killed.

CNN Artcicle
(https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/28/us/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting/index.html )

This article talks about how the police found that the suspect Robert Bowers had a collection of weapons from previous posts on his social media. They also mention that he had been posting anti-semitic comments on the internet. It is also mentioned that the suspect was posting about trump before the incident happened and complained that the Jews were helping the central American caravans. The article then proceeds to talk about how the victims have been identified and that the gunman could face the death penalty. The article is convincing because it presents all the information about the incident such as the actions previous to the shooting, the aftermath, the victims and people who were affected as well as the consequences that the shooter will have to face.


This article seems slightly biased toward the left
as it mentions how the shooter had been posting about trump which basically forms a connection to him. This makes it a little biased as the article does not really tell what the gunman said about Trump, but just that he commented on something, which subconsciously makes people think that Trump had an impact on the shooter's acts. Another thing that could make it a little more biased to the left would be all the details that the article gives about the firearms used as most liberals are against guns which would emphasize in a way how the Republicans might be one of the cause why these incidents happen as they are pro-gun and do not really think could cause this much damage as it did to this Jew community in Pittsburgh. Something to take into consideration is that this article was written a week before the midterm elections which could be a reason why the authors decided to mention Donald Trump and give such many details regarding the guns used and the damage caused as it could be a strategy used to make the Republican side look bad as they usually support guns. One thing that the author could have added to strengthen the argument would be to add what the shooter commented about Trump because we do not actually know if what he supposedly was real or had any connection to trump, which makes it a bit untrustworthy.

Breitbart Article
(https://www.breitbart.com/news/11-slain-in-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-identified/)

This article talks about the incident in a very brief way, as it only states the most known facts such as the casualties, the firearms that were used to commit the crime. Most of it just gives basic information and the rest of the article basically talks about how Donald Trump has been supporting the people that were affected.

The article seems credible and convincing because it has lots of direct quotations from relevant people from the incident. One of the biases is that the article tries to make Donald Trump seem supportive as opposed to the CNN article, which makes him seem as if he had a certain impact on the motivation to commit the incident. Another thing I noticed is that this article does not mention much information about the firearms used, in fact, there is only one sentence that acknowledges that firearms were used and even then, the sentence does not provide much information which defers with the CNN article in which the firearms used are clearly stated and portrays the message that having guns is very negative. This article was written before the midterm elections happened which could have affected the way that it was written as the author probably wanted the positively represent the conservative side since the source lies on the right. It could have also affected the voters who were not sure who to vote for and if this article was the only one they could read then their point of view might have been changed. Something that the source could have added in order to make the source more credible would be to acknowledge the other side and maybe tell how Donald Trump did not have anything to do or impacted the suspect's motivation to commit such crime.

I usually get my news from NBC or USA Today, which are slightly biased toward the left. I believe that sources that are less skewed to either the right or the left are more credible because then they would not have as many biases as a conservative or liberal source would have. I think I make an effort to understand both sides of a given topic, and I usually do not trust the news unless I have done enough research or if I already have knowledge about the topic.