

Take a random five-minute sample of Fox and another of CNN. Believing their own slander that Trump is an incompetent boob, they are shocked facing a black-belt master in gotcha-question judo. Anti-Trump CNN reporters at the COVID-19 press briefings make runs at Trump, only to be ferociously repelled.

President Trump is fighting back, and I’m thrilled. On the other hand, CNN, whose slogans include “Facts First” and “The Most Trusted Name in News,” makes little attempt to be fair. But Hannity doesn’t pretend to be a news program. Then Sean Hannity delivers red meat to a hungry audience seeking confirmation bias. Up until 9:00 PM eastern, that is, when the children have gone to bed. While there is no doubt that Fox News leans to the right, Fox makes a reasonable effort to deliver news programming straight up. But, I contend, Fox is not nearly as one-sided as CNN.

The weapons are “news” spoken with raised eyebrows, feigned irony, imagined injustice, solipsistic condescension, and melodramatic ennui. Media pundits and social media influencers are the front-line troops. On any given day, it seems like America is at war with itself. Read their differing viewpoints as part of our Political Pen Pals series below. At Divided We Fall, we do not fear difficult conversations. In doing so, they find common ground on how they believe the media should behave and their solutions to the issue of bias news coverage. This week on our Political Pen Pals series, Robert Wilkes and Taylor Fiscus discuss their issues with the media outlet that is considered representative of the other side. People around the country often want the facts, but our media outlets achieve higher ratings through partisan coverage. We often hear that Americans complain about bias in their news coverage.
