SIGNATURE ASSIGNMENT: JOURNALISM 1 Signature Assignment: Journalism Chelcee Phelon Utah Valley University
SIGNATURE ASSIGNMENT: JOURNALISM 2 This year is the first year that I have ever been interested in the presidential election. Before this year I didn t follow any news pertaining to the election and I really didn t care who won. After the election was over I would find out from a friend or family member who was going to be our next president and that was that, there was nothing I could do about it, so why should I care? I could vote but I am one of those people who feel like their vote doesn t matter. I am not sure if its because I am older now or if it s because this election seemed so much more entertaining than past elections, but before and after the election, I watched and read every news story that I could get my hands on. It s interesting now to be able to compare and contrast news stories from different media outlets and even those in other countries. For this paper, I chose to focus on articles that relate specifically to the shock of Donald Trump winning the presidential election. Political Economics and Nationalism are the topics that I am going to use to investigate these articles further. Looking into these articles, I was able to see power in a lot of different places. In most of the articles, I can see power being given in some sections and taken away in others. You would think that with these articles talking about Trump being elected, power would be given to the rich but it is actually given to the poor. Power is given to blue collar, white families because they say that those are the people who came out to vote for trump. Power is taken away from those not in that category because the media makes it seem like no on other than white, working class families voted for trump but that is not the case. Power is obviously given to Donald Trump in each article because they are all about him and, specifically, they are all about him winning the election. In a way, I feel
SIGNATURE ASSIGNMENT: JOURNALISM 3 like some of his power is taken away when the articles mention how shocked they and everyone else in the country was when he won the election. His power is also taken away when they mention all of the negative things he has done and could continue to do as president. The Fox News Politics article I read does a really good job bringing power to Donald Trump. It talks about all the positive aspects of him and his plan as president. He is going to be our president whether people like it or not and I think the media should try to help bring the country together instead of tearing it apart. I see power being taken away from some races in these articles. Some races are portrayed as fearful, which makes them seem powerless. The article I read from Mexico, is warning its people to beware of Trump. They call trump an authoritarian racist (Toosi, 2016) and tell the people in their country that they need to watch out. Trumps promise, which is mentioned in all the articles I read, to get rid of illegal immigrants in our country, definitely takes the power away from them. The media helps to keep the power away from them and the fear going even if it shouldn t be there. The majority of the articles that I read from the United States about Trump winning the election were all extremely similar. Most of them share similar, if not the exact same, quotes. They also have similar titles and similar content. They all talk about the shock of the election results, that Clinton should have won and mostly negative things about Trump. All of the reporters want to report what is going on and its basically all the same so it is almost pointless to read multiple articles about Trump winning the election, unless you start looking at articles outside of the United States. This is my first time reading an article from another country about Trump being elected for president. It is really unbelievable to see just how different the articles written
SIGNATURE ASSIGNMENT: JOURNALISM 4 in other countries are from the articles written in the United States. The two articles that I looked at are from the media in Mexico and Canada. As you can imagine, the article from Mexico is more extreme but I can t help but think that Canada may not be too excited about our future president either. As I mentioned earlier, Mexico is warning the people in their country about Donald Trump. This is completely different from the news in the United States. I think it would be really strange if our news articles were warning the people in our country about our president, especially since we voted for him. In the article from Canada, they write, Trump will have a free hand to dismantle Obama s achievements, many of which are executive orders and administrative actions can be undone with the stroke of a pen (Dale, 2016). This is completely different from articles in the United States where we mention Obama welcoming Trump in. The articles here give Trump all the power where the articles from other countries take it away from him. The article from Mexico ends by saying But it s the United States who are the real losers with Donald Trump as their leader (Toosi, 2016). I was kind of shocked when I read this. I can t imagine our reporters ending one of their reports like that. The way we report is very different from other countries, in so many ways. In conclusion, power can be given and taken away easily when it comes to the media. One minute they are building you up and making you look good and the next they are pointing out all of your flaws and influencing their readers in the way that they want. Depending on which country the news is coming from, it can be easy to tell which side they are on.
SIGNATURE ASSIGNMENT: JOURNALISM 5 References Bacon, J. (2016, November 14). Donald Trump stuns the world, elected USA's 45th president. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/11/08/trumpclinton-target-social-media-swing-states-final-hours/93494872/ Dale, D. (2016, November 9). Donald Trump wins, America elects an unthinkable president. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from https://www.thestar.com/news/world/uselection/2016/11/09/donald-trump-winsamerica-elects-an-unthinkable-president.html Flegenheimer, M., & Barbaro, M. (2016, November 9). Donald Trump is elected president in stunning repudiation of the establishment. The New York Times. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trumppresident.html Toosi, N. (2016, November 9). Mexico warily eyes a president-elect Trump. Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/mexico-usrelations-trump-presidency-2016-231097 Trump wins presidency, defeats Clinton in historic election upset. (2016, November 8). Retrieved November 15, 2016, from http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/08/first-polls-close-in-2016-racetrump-projected-to-win-ind-ky-clinton-wins-vt.html