Can't Truss It

"What are the differences between mainstream American media outlets such as Fox News and CNN compared to other international outlets such as the BBC or Corriere Della Sera in content, layout, political bias, etc.?"

In terms of layout, the differences between American and International mainstream media outlets are superficial. The companies’ logos were displayed at the top left corner of their home pages. Beneath the logos are navigation menus and search fields to explore different sections of the site. The news is categorized by geography (national, international) and interest (entertainment, sports, business, technology and politics). The sites use multiple content boxes to present information and maintain uniformity. They also offer multimedia services with quick accessibility for the home page. One distinction I did find on the BBC’s site was that they offered links to display the news in thirty two different languages. I was not able to find such a feature on CNN’s or Fox’s page.

One instance where Fox’s political bias was quite evident was the headline title regarding Obama’s VP pick. Fox’s title read “Obama-Biden Ticket Attacks McCain” while the headline titles regarding Obama and Bidden on the BBC’s and CNN’s sites were general and less partisan.

To be honest, it was quite difficult for me to find striking differences between the domestic and international news outlets. All sites had similar layouts, headlines and content. Even Fox News which has a right wing bias, it was not too evident aside from the one example I mentioned in my previous paragraph.

I guess it depends on the story. Take the media coverage of the Iraq war. American mainstream news media outlets were less critical of government and officials because they did not want to jeopardize their access to those officials, appear as anti American and compromise advertisement revenue. The International press pushed harder because they had nothing to lose.

I tuned out the American mainstream media after 9/11. When I kept hearing, reading and seeing “they hate us because of our freedom”, I knew they were full of shit and nothing more than the government's propaganda tool. They were cheerleaders for the Iraq war and late in refuting the Bush Administration lies regarding Iraqi WMDs. The American mainstream media never provides context for the issues we face today and reinforces the naive idea that the world is black and white.