I hate going after local newspapers, especially the Sacramento Bee, but this article was particularly loaded and I want to take a minute to address and dissect what I believe is a particularly polarized piece of news and give my two cents as to why the Sacramento Bee's editorial board needs to chill a bit. It should be noted that as a liberal myself who doesn't like Trump, it should be harder for me to find loaded language in an article bashing on Trump.
It would be too long and confusing to try and address this entire article using all kinds of loaded language, so I'm just going to give a few of the easy pickings since they are in abundance here and would encourage anybody reading this to check it out themselves to fully grasp what I'm trying to get at in this blog.
Reification:
- "Already, he has damaged the presidency and our democracy."
- "Clearly, Trump is no Franklin D. Roosevelt."
Vagueness:
- "Contempt for openness."
- "Trump has failed to unify the nation."
Weasel Words:
- "The inquiries keep getting closer to his inner circle; depending on what’s uncovered, his presidency could be undermined, if not imperiled."
- It should be noted that there were a ridiculous amount of weasel words in this editorial, paragraph 5 (a small to medium sized paragraph) alone using the word "could" as a weasel word 4 times.
I also want to point out the unnecessary adjectives and words that have generally negative connotations are grossly overused. When describing his approach to tax reform, they use words like "me first" and "haphazard." It would suffice to merely describe what he did and why it is wrong, but instead the Sac Bee opted for using loaded language that was not backed up by any concrete argument voiced in the paragraph. Loaded language without any given reason was very frequent in this article to the point where it did make me a bit sick.
I would like to bring up something that extends to most other news outlets out there today, and that is that you can't judge Trump by his own ridiculous standards. It seems wrong for a news outlet to bash Trump for saying that he would ban all Muslims from the country and keep out Mexicans with a border wall, and then turn on a dime and criticize Trump again, saying that he is a failure because he hasn't accomplished all that he said he would. I'm not a huge fan myself, but you cannot judge a president based on all the things they said they would do. Obama went into his first term way too idealistic never completed many of his own promises, yet many of the same news outlets out to get trump today still love Obama for all that he has done.
Too many news outlets are setting Trump up for failure, to be judged too harshly. If he fails in his goals, the Sac Bee will say he is a failure because he didn't do what he said he would and if he did manage to pull of a travel ban, the Sac Bee would still be complaining because he actually did do what he said he would do, the same cynicism found in the highly criticized Fox News. All I ask is for news outlets to judge Trump not based on what he said he would do, but judge him when he acts, judge him based on the standards you hold yourselves to, not all that he has yet to do, especially when I know many of you news outlets disagree with what is on his agenda.
In closing, I just want to say that judging and bashing the other team has become all too frequent and all to harsh in the news today. All this does it further the divide between people on opposite ends of the political spectrum and alienates moderates that just people to get along. We cannot fix the political discourse you at the Sac Bee seem so consumed by until we stop with the hyper-partisanship you seem so intent on creating.
http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article147385959.html
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