CNN v. Washington Post: Confirmation Bias

I've had personal experience chatting with people about various news networks and their opinions on how they cover stories, and I've heard pretty similar things about the major ones, for example: "Fox is too conservative," or, "CNN is too liberal." Confirmation bias is definitely noticeable if you go looking for it, but it can also work the other way, too, when viewers only choose to read stories they agree with. While looking for an example of this, I found a few differences in the same story reported by both CNN and Washington Post.

The big story in the news this week comes from the Trump campaign and its manager, Corey Lewandowski. Here are the facts:

• On March 8, Trump held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields attempted to ask Trump a question.
• The Jupiter, Fla. police department released a video showing Lewandowski touching Fields as she gets close to Trump.

• Lewandowski was charged with battery by Jupiter police on March 29.

Of the two news outlets I looked at, Washington Post was the first to publish a story about this incident. Compared to CNN, WP used some pretty different language to describe what happened at the press conference, such as:

CNN used the term "pulling her away" to describe the action shown in the video above. WP gives the idea that Lewandowski was clearly in the wrong for this action. The articles go on to differ.

WP mentions that Lewandowski denied he ever touched Fields, making him out to be more of a liar and bad guy, whereas CNN skips this small detail. CNN also focuses more on Fields and her responses to the incident, including multiple tweets made from the reporter. WP does not give any direct quotes from Fields in the article, making Lewandowski the main person and giving a lot of one-sided comments.

Overall, both news outlets give accurate facts and details about the incident and how it has proceeded, but WP uses language and verbiage to make it seem as though Lewandowski was in the wrong and that there is no other explanation as to why he touched Fields. CNN seems to be a little more balanced in their reporting.

The advice I always like to give is to make sure you're reading the same stories from multiple sources. Make sure you get your news from different outlets. There is a bias in the media, and it would be wise of us to listen to more than one source to get our information.