One Story, Two News Reports

One Story, Two News Reports
The Mueller Report


Over the past two years, an investigation was held by the US Attorney General's Office to discover whether or not Donald Trump was coordinating, to his advantage, with Russia during the time of his presidential candidacy. This investigation was lead by Robert S. Mueller. When the report from the investigation was released, sizable chunks of it were blacked out so that they were not legible. The person in charge of censoring this report was Attorney General William Barr. This failure to disclose all the information aroused suspicion in some while others dismissed it as nothing to worry about.

An article by the New York Times takes the position that redaction of large portions of this investigation report is cause for suspicion. In this article, the author presents information regarding Barr's past behavior as reason he should not be trusted now. In other words, this article uses fact as credibility to increase persuasion. It is brought to light that in the past, when Barr had been tasked with writing (censoring) a different report, he did so inaccurately. In addition, the author chose to compare the current situation at hand to the Watergate scandal of 1972. This is a method of making the reader view the Mueller Report more negatively. The author also points out that the report itself was released at a very convenient time, during Easter and Passover. This observation makes the report seem even more suspicious in the eyes of the reader.

An article by Fox news, shockingly, shares a contrasting view on the issue. Fox news takes the side of Trumps Attorney, Rudy Giuliani in stating that the report was biased. The author focuses the entire article entirely on one line of the report: "if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state." This article shares and agrees with Giuliani's attack of this statement saying that it is not an attorney's job to say they can't prove he didn't do it, their job is to say they can't prove that he did. Even though this is just a small sign of bias among the heaps of evidence that Trump is guilty, Fox News chose to target this statement and omit the other facts in order to persuade their readers to believe Trump is not guilty.

Clearly, media is very capable of manipulating a story to be seen in a certain way.

New York Times Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/opinion/mueller-report-redactions.html

Fox News Article: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rudy-giuliani-mueller-report-obstruction-law

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