A bigger source of effective (at driving division and getting Your Side riled up) slant isn't when the same story is covered differently, but when an outlet or set of related outlets cover a "story" that evaporates entirely if you fill in basic, deliberately-omitted context. There's not another side to cover, because it's not even a story.
Example: I see "[Administration] transporting migrants from the border to cities around the country, in secretive nighttime flights" receiving heavy coverage on a certain news channel (you can probably fill in the gaps here, but I'll leave the specifics out because that's not important for the illustration). Like, it's most of what they're talking about, for the entire hour or so I happen to be in a room with them on the TV, and not during an opinion segment.
Quick google:
1) Not secret,
2) Some are at night, but that's just because of, like... flight scheduling, same way some commercial flights are after sundown and others aren't, plenty are during the day, and it's not as if nighttime flights are somehow significantly harder to track than daytime ones or like it's weird for passenger planes to fly at night, so that whole bit was silly to begin with, worst evil plan ever if that was a deliberate part of it (as was implied), and
3) It's part of longstanding, ordinary operation of immigration control, isn't a new thing, and is happening for non-crazy (and certainly not secret) reasons—though one could disagree with them and say something else should be done instead, sure, but that's not how it's being covered, it's being covered as (implicitly) a new program (not new) being carried out for mysterious reasons (not mysterious) in secret (not secret).
Is this "story" receiving similar heavy coverage with a different slant on perceived-as-opposing channels? No, the info on it's mostly to be found on simple factual sites that published info on these activities from before it was "a story", and sites dedicated to debunking "fwd: fwd: fwd:" crap, because it's, emphatically, not even news, so how would an ordinary news program cover it? It's simply absent.
The less-brazen version of this is to not cover or downplay something that is news but that you'd rather bury but this stuff is... on another level. The "other side" can't provide a different slant, or uncover a story you're hiding, because it's not even a story. (the evolved version of this tactic, of course, is that your opinion-focused programs accuse the "other side" of burying the story and use it as Yet More Evidence that they can't be trusted, which story they can't even responsibly cover because it's made-up, unless their story is to report that you're inventing news) Bonus points that this gives you stuff to talk about if you're the ones trying to avoid a real story that's inconvenient. It's brilliant, really.
Comments
You check CNN, you check Fox News... same story, different spin. Who's correct? Probably neither.
A bigger source of effective (at driving division and getting Your Side riled up) slant isn't when the same story is covered differently, but when an outlet or set of related outlets cover a "story" that evaporates entirely if you fill in basic, deliberately-omitted context. There's not another side to cover, because it's not even a story.
Example: I see "[Administration] transporting migrants from the border to cities around the country, in secretive nighttime flights" receiving heavy coverage on a certain news channel (you can probably fill in the gaps here, but I'll leave the specifics out because that's not important for the illustration). Like, it's most of what they're talking about, for the entire hour or so I happen to be in a room with them on the TV, and not during an opinion segment.
Quick google:
1) Not secret,
2) Some are at night, but that's just because of, like... flight scheduling, same way some commercial flights are after sundown and others aren't, plenty are during the day, and it's not as if nighttime flights are somehow significantly harder to track than daytime ones or like it's weird for passenger planes to fly at night, so that whole bit was silly to begin with, worst evil plan ever if that was a deliberate part of it (as was implied), and
3) It's part of longstanding, ordinary operation of immigration control, isn't a new thing, and is happening for non-crazy (and certainly not secret) reasons—though one could disagree with them and say something else should be done instead, sure, but that's not how it's being covered, it's being covered as (implicitly) a new program (not new) being carried out for mysterious reasons (not mysterious) in secret (not secret).
Is this "story" receiving similar heavy coverage with a different slant on perceived-as-opposing channels? No, the info on it's mostly to be found on simple factual sites that published info on these activities from before it was "a story", and sites dedicated to debunking "fwd: fwd: fwd:" crap, because it's, emphatically, not even news, so how would an ordinary news program cover it? It's simply absent.
The less-brazen version of this is to not cover or downplay something that is news but that you'd rather bury but this stuff is... on another level. The "other side" can't provide a different slant, or uncover a story you're hiding, because it's not even a story. (the evolved version of this tactic, of course, is that your opinion-focused programs accuse the "other side" of burying the story and use it as Yet More Evidence that they can't be trusted, which story they can't even responsibly cover because it's made-up, unless their story is to report that you're inventing news) Bonus points that this gives you stuff to talk about if you're the ones trying to avoid a real story that's inconvenient. It's brilliant, really.