CNN vs. Washington Times: Democrats Ready for Impeachment

          The news sources CNN and Washington Times, both bring updates to Trump's impeachment inquiry, specifically the democrats support for the impeachment. For context, basically during the inquiry of Trump's impeachment, there has been a big reaction from both sides of the parties. It has been given that the democratic parties has been extremely supportive of the impeachment, while the republic has been defending Trump. What is known about the inquiry is that the democrats' case has been supported by the phone call that Trump was on with Mr. Zelensky, the Ukraine president, where democrats has said Trump pressured Zelensky to do his bidding and gain an upper hand in the 2020 presidential race.
           CNN seems to have targeted a slightly different audience compared to the Washington Times, when comparing both news outlets. The largest and most stark contrast of these two sources is that CNN is more liberal, while Washington Times is more conservative. Because of the large difference in the two source's views on the Trump Impeachment inquiry, they both use their own ways to persuade readers to see their truth or reality of what is really going on with the situation. Although the circumstance of Trump's case with both supporters and non-supporters, the language used in the articles are very strong and almost aggressive when trying to sway their audience into seeing their own reality of the situation.
           In the CNN article At Least 228 House Democrats Have said They support and Impeachment Inquiry, it could already be seen in the title that there is only one side of the situation or news that is being projected to readers. By only mentioning the Democrats' support for impeachment, without also suggesting that republicans say otherwise and the defenses that Trump may use against his impeachment. Even the words "At Least" indicates more vagueness into really giving the real number on support for impeachment, and makes readers anticipate that the number would be much larger than what it could actually be. Not only is the argument in the title vague in a way, but it also doesn't say much since all the people voting against Trump are the Democrats, which would be more of a given since they are the opposite party. What is slightly strange about this article would mainly be the misleading title and its brief description of the situation and the other side of the argument. The fact that the title doesn't mention really anything except the strong force of democrats that support the impeachment, but then contradicts itself when stating: "However, CNN's count includes many Democrats who say they support an impeachment investigation but are still waiting for the results of the probe before deciding whether to finally vote to impeach Trump". I mean, the article was making some sort of weak attempt at ethos by showing both sides, however it doesn't even include the actual situation into the bolded title. The article briefly goes over the general facts of the situation with vagueness that could be misleading, and the shown bias on the democratic side when bombarding it with over one hundred quotes of just democrats that support the impeachment right after explaining the situation.
            On the other hand, the Washington Post did also mislead readers with its language, but for the opposite side of the argument. The bias is really underlined and is very vague including the use of connotations on the very first sentence of the article: "President Donald Trump said he was just exercising his right to free speech. Democrats said he was intimidating a witness." Just stating and manipulating the language of the situations with connotations is explicitly shown, when dressing up the truth by saying how President Trump simply exercise his right to free speech, instead of addressing the fact he went on a suspicious phone call with the Ukraine President. Even the word "intimidating" vs. "pressuring" is a denotation which strongly indicates which side the article is supporting. The denotations that are used to either downplay the other side, and make their own argument seem more attractive is already straying from just the facts itself, by trying to manipulate readers into accepting this reality it created, rather than really just looking at denotations and raw facts of the situation instead and forming some sort of individual opinion.
             As shown in both of these news sources, it can already be inferred that they are very bias which is shown through the vague and misleading language that is used in order to sway certain audiences. Because of this misleading and bias implications used in both articles, it makes it hard for readers from really just spotting the truth on what just happened, instead of manipulating and showing mainly one side of the argument to drag readers into agreement.

Peace.
-Livian Hui :)
Washington Times
CNN

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