How Biased is CNN?
By: Emma Edwardsen
Tags: Bias, Biden, Trump, 2020 Presidential Race, Election 2020

On the night of the election, I tuned into CNN just as the votes had started rolling in. I mainly watched CNN News, but briefly switched between that and Fox News so I could compare the two channels. I found CNN greatly affects the public’s perception of the election because of its obvious bias towards Donald Trump.

As the night started off, John King, the CNN news anchor, said a lot of things that showed his support for Biden over Trump. As he was presenting Florida’s vote count he said, “this is important for our side.” This shows bias because he’s referring to his side as Biden’s side. To the news anchor, Biden is the better option when compared with Trump. In no way was he trying to be blatant about his support for Biden, and I also found that whoever chose the pictures displayed of the candidates was also clearly biased.

The images that were selected to represent them were completely different from one another. Biden’s picture on the screen was highlighted with effects to make him almost seem like he was glowing. He was centered in his picture and shown to be looking straight into the camera, while Trump’s was the complete opposite. Trump’s picture was skewed to the left and he wasn’t even looking directly into the camera. Because of these pictures, Biden was represented as a somewhat god-like figure compared to Trump.

As the night continued, more and more votes were being sent in and viewers were able to see the election unfold before them. When Florida, Texas, and Georgia finally sent their votes in, you could see the news anchors’ excitement as they turned out to be blue states at the time. He instructed Democrats to “take your phone out and take a picture of this because this is a good sight to see.” Not only does this show his bias in the election, but I feel like he intentionally says this to appeal to Democratic viewers while making Republicans angry. King acts as the gatekeeper because he’s choosing to focus more on the Biden side of the election as opposed to Trump’s side. If I were to compare this gatekeeping to Fox News, Fox News was a lot more open about each candidate and gave valuable information for both parties.

Towards the end of my time watching, Ohio was being disputed between Trump and Biden. One quote from King is, “If he(Biden) can get Ohio, it’s just a buffet. A buffet of possibility. There are so many menu options.” As a viewer, I was kind of surprised that he said this about Trump. In my eyes, this quote from King portrays Trump as a grotesque animal that Biden is going to “buffet” on. It took me a few minutes after this quote to realize that he actually had said it because it seemed so surreal to me that he would compare Biden beating Trump with an all you can eat buffet.

Whether you watched CNN for 5 minutes or a few hours, it is clear that there is a strong bias on the channel. This bias was mainly against Trump, and can greatly affect a viewer’s perception of the election as a whole. A consequence of this could be making democrats believe that their candidate is winning by a landslide, and republicans will believe they don’t stand a chance. While this seemed evident when watching CNN, the election was actually very close at the time and the two candidates are still going neck and neck almost three days later.