ABC has a Biased Broadcast to Make Biden the People’s Candidate
By: Natalie Cantieri
Tags: Politics, Bias, Abc News, Biden Vs Trump, Election 2020

Joe Biden standing outside his childhood home with family, friends, and civilians in the neighborhood.

Over the last year, heavy campaigning and politics have swept the country. Three debates with President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have left the nation restless for the anticipated election night. On election night I watched the American Broadcasting Network better known as, ABC. ABC is owned by the Walt Disney company that also owns Fox News. While Fox leans right, ABC tends to lean more left. The excitement for the election was eating me up all day so I ended up watching the election while it kicked off at 7 pm. The coverage of the 2020 election on ABC was slightly biased towards Biden and would leave the viewers with the perception that Biden will win because he is the people’s president.

Starting in the broadcast, the lede of their story was focused on Trump. His Election Day rally was very confident and ready to conquer the election. This was seen with his tagline “Winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me”. Then he went on to talk about how he won’t declare victory until the winner is called. All of the things that ABC caught Trump saying ended up leaving the viewers with the perception that Trump is overly confident in his ability to get re-elected and that he of course won’t call it until he wins. Stacking this story first put a bad taste in your mouth about Trump before we even went to talk about Biden.

After this story, we continue to Biden. When talking about Biden ABC showed him in his hometown. They took us down memory lane by having him walk through his childhood neighborhood. Everyone saw him and were clapping. He wasn’t like Trump in a conference room that makes him look closed off and not interested in engaging with his supporters. Biden even stopped in his house and saw his relatives. Biden then came out with his family and got even more heartstrings pulled when they talked about his son Beau. During his segment in the broadcast, you couldn’t help but root for him because his son died of brain cancer. Viewers’ perceptions turn for trusting Biden purely off of the way he’s interacting with normal people. The way ABC made sure to not get any photos framed up words showed how they didn’t want to make him more powerful and instead wanted him to appeal to the American people.

Next in the broadcast, they went on to talk about how there is a big number of suburban women coming in to vote this year. In previous years they have been favoring Trump, but this year these women have switched to Biden. They have seen more playgroups starting to talk about political issues because allowing your kid to be in activities to even going in person has gotten controversial. These have now started leading these women in a way of wanting a more democratic leader that can help bring COVID under control for their kids. They did end up sourcing one woman who was an avid Trump supporter in the 2016 election, but now she’s seen the light and now votes for Biden because he will improve the situation for her family. Once again ABC subtly sources liberal people and doesn’t let the other side speak. They paint Trump in a bad light and subtly let Biden be favored. Viewers will come out of this clip being favored towards Biden because people favor him for their kids coming back to him being painted as the people’s candidate.

Throughout this broadcast, we have seen three different instances of how ABCs broadcast was biased toward Biden. This is so important to notice because they can still influence the way their vote goes. Even though the broadcast was at 7 pm, the polls are still open to 8 pm and some even stayed open later due to malfunctions. People are going to walk away thinking Biden is a better person than Trump. Biden ends up having more relatability in the end due to the images and the emotional appeal that they kept bringing up. Relatability plays a big role in influencing people nowadays. If someone all of the sudden seems super-rich and like they can’t talk to the common people of where they grew up, they lose relatability. Biden’s ability to be in the public instead of a conference room gave him the relatability factor that gives people confidence with who they are voting into office. These ideas can drastically change people on the fences idea day off and can impact the election big time in swing states.