COVID-19 in the White House Social Sciences Essay Paper

Media Bias: COVID-19 in the White House
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Media Bias: Reporting the COVID-19 Whitehouse Breakout
The Covid-19 outbreak in the White House was met with variant reactions from the country, politicians, and the media as media reports took it to indicate the country's preparedness, the president's commitment, health department's ability to control, and public participation. The reactions to media topics depend on the particular outlet an individual relies on as each media house exhibits their perspective publishing and reporting which leads to bias. The beginning of October Covid-19 outbreak in the white is one of the stories that instigated various media perspectives on the US combat against the virus. Some of the main lines of focus include the effect on the journalists, the extent of spread, Trump’s view on the disease, political rallies hosted after the first diagnosis, health department reaction, and the reliability of the White House reports on the virus. Digesting these perspectives can elicit mixed outcomes of the event than intended to different media consumers in the county and around the globe like fear, panic, laxity, and even anger. Conducting a comparative analysis across different publications on the story can illuminate the various biases induced due to variation perspectives of media houses, editors, and reporters. Such analysis helps in establishing the fairness, accuracy, impartiality, and accountability of news sources as well as the drivers of the bias in reporting. Elejalde et al., (2018) note studying that the vocabulary as well as entities identified and stressed upon in a report is the main way to identify bias in news reports. Analyzing the October white house Covid-19 outbreak media reports by scrutinizing the vocabulary and entities mentioned indicates variant political, geopolitical, and socio-economic affiliations across major outlets in the US and globally.
How Different Media Reported the White House Outbreak
In their analysis of how global media responded to the virus outbreak in the white house BBC (2020), noted that most of the reports focused on criticizing the president and notable personnel in the pentagon’s reaction to the virus's significance. Culbertson’s (2020) analysis also shows that American media also focused on the White House’s handling of the pandemic and the political implications in the elections. He shows major international papers like the Washington Post and CNN taking the chance to criticize the president’s ‘long-standing’ policy on Covid-19. The BBC analysis also showed international media like Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Liberation all focusing on Trump’s attitude towards the pandemic. Aljazeera and NPR (Simmons-Duffin, 2020; Stepansky and Roberts, 2020) looked at the failure to conduct contact tracing on Judge Amy Barret’s event as a leading factor to the secondary infections. The Guardian (Sullivan et al., 2020) also reinforced the idea of leadership failure due to the extension of the virus into the white house from the more than 209, 000 deaths attributed to the virus. This kind of coverage can increase the panic in public as it indicates the lack of a stout policy on handling the disease. Focusing on the failure of the administration in controlling the disease in the country would switch the reaction from caution to panic in the public. Reading only the reports that are biased against the government’s current efforts can lead to perspective change on its viewers and readers on the government’s role and effort in eradicating the virus. The panic in the US can be attributed partially to the biased media reports on Trump's efforts and attitude towards Covid since other countries like the UK have an impending second lock-down in addition to some infected members of the royal family.
Most papers paid attention to the effect on the election outcome and even deviated to cover Biden’s campaign and diagnosis. The New York Times was one of the publications that focused on Trump’s general attitude and election campaigns instead of solely focusing on the Covid-19 cases in the white house. In an article by Wu et al., (2020), the paper focuses on the president’s events post-diagnosis insisting on the political rally set to host despite directives from medical staff. It also focused on Biden’s remarks describing the president as ‘reckless and unconscionable. Another publication that turned the break-out story into a political issue is Aljazeera. The articles and editorial pieces published by Aljazeera were mostly focusing on the effects it has on the election as most had complementary pieces following Biden’s progression on the campaign. One of the headlines by Stepansky and Roberts (2020) manages to use Trump’s remarks ‘Don’t let it dominate you’ as a headline for the US election news while incorporating Biden’s quote on ‘national emergency’ due to the white house Covid cases. Some of the politically stuffed reports by Aljazeera about the breakout includes a headline that starts with Biden’s views on the policy effectiveness in the white house. The Guardian’s (Sullivan et al., 2020) coverage on the outbreak covered Biden's campaign, Bernie Sanders rallying Biden, and even touched on the presidential debate. Paralleling Biden’s views, the presidential debate, the election with every mention of the white house breakout is potent of political bias as it has been used as the main campaign tool for the election. Majoring on the political implications shifts the readers’ views and inclinations as the reports are indicative of administrative failures in the Trump government. The subscribers of such media are likely to vote for Biden because a story about the Covid is turned to the basis for political debates on Trump’s achievements.
Some media outlets like CNBC and CBS, however, opted to a more positive reporting on the outbreak as they focused on the recovery of the president and a positive outlook ab...