The NYT and Fox on the same story: no wonder we don’t understand each other

My Google Homepage referenced Fox and the New York Times on a story.

From Fox Nine suspects tied to a militia in the Midwest are charged with
conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral in the hopes
of killing more law enforcement people, federal prosecutors said Monday.

In the entire ten paragraph story, Fox names the group - Hutaree, in paragraph two – and says that they are an extremist group.

From the NYT  Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been
indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged
plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an
anti-government uprising.

As I started to read the story in the NYT, I wondered how they knew it was a Christian organization. Then the article referenced their website as saying that they were Christian. If they self identify as Christians, I am willing to agree they should be identified as Christians. I began to wonder if I had overlooked it at Fox. So, I went back and, no reference to Christians in the Fox article.  

Did Fox not think it was important that the group is Christian? – I'll bet they would think it was important if the group were Muslim. – Did they think it was important but we shouldn't know? I have no idea, but the Fox reader and the NYT reader will walk away with different facts, and, probably, different opinions on what happened and why.

I'll stick with the New York Times.

3 thoughts on “The NYT and Fox on the same story: no wonder we don’t understand each other

  1. From time to time I look at Fox News’ website to see how they position a particular story. I’m astounded at not only the discrepancies in a story, but more importantly, what is often left out, as your blog illustrates.
    I’m torn between wanting to stay informed and being so freaking annoyed(well, ok, more than annoyed, lots more)at the obvious and intended spin.

  2. Doesn’t this happen all the time? I was just reading in the New Yorker (March 29) by Jane Mayer about a new book called “Courting Disaster” by Marc A. Thiessen a former speechwriter in the Bush Administration.
    She writes the “Thiessen’s effort to rewrite the history of the C.I.A.’s interrogation program comes not long after a Presidential race in which both the Republican and the Democratic nominees agreed that state sponsored cruelty had damaged and dishonored America. The publication of Courting Disaster suggests that Obama’s avowed determination “to look forward, not back” has laid the recent past open to partisan reinterpretation. By holding no one accountable for past abuse, and by convening no commission on what did and didn’t protect our country, President Obama has left the telling of this dark chapter in American history to those who most want to whitewash it”
    It’s just amazing what the media is able to get away with!

  3. I guess so, Howard. Everybody has a point of view, and maybe it is usually subtler or sneakier than Fox, but I am still surprised when I read something that just leaves out one of the most pertinent facts.
    I can sympathize with Thiessen – it is always hard to admit when we screw up and do do so, so publicly and so against what American stands for; the temptation to justify it must be huge.

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