When thinking about which article I actually wanted to
choose in regards to the “Muslim ban” I knew I wanted it to be something from a
source that a lot of people visited frequently. A few months ago CNN politics,
a very well known website, released an article with the title “US President Donald Trump
signs new travel ban, exempts Iraq”.
While obviously we know that CNN leans more against Trump and his cabinet, this
situation was a tad different. This headline shocked and enraged people
throughout the country because America has always built a platform based around
immigration. We find pride in our country on being a “melting pot” of various
cultures, and a headline like this goes against that entire moral code. The one
word, however, that caused for most of the uproar is the word ban. The
worst part about the whole thing? Never once in the actual executive order that
was released, was the word ban mentioned. I think this is the best
example of fake news for me to dissect because this came from a reputable source
like CNN. I also think it really fits well with this assignment because it
shows how much of an impact the Internet has on our society. The day after this
articles and articles like it dropped, people were going crazy! Twitter was in
frenzy with outraged tweets from people all over the world, people were talking
about it all over campus. Even in our class we talked about it. This is a
perfect example of emotion dealing with social media and political news. It
shows how crucial word choice is when trying to make people feel a certain way.
It’s bizarre to think that if this article came out with a title like “Trump
signs executive order to protect country” the entire feel of the situation
would be different. Which is pretty much what the executive order was trying to
do. Word choice in a situation, and a time, like this really instill a
different reaction to the audience reading it. Especially on a site where (it
feels like) people are just looking for a reason to be a little irritated. It
is no secret that politics makes people a little on edge as it is, and with a
title like this article it only makes sense that it sent a shockwave through
the system.
The first line of the CNN article states
“US President Donald Trump signed a new executive order
Monday that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority countries…”. While yes, Donald Trump was the one singing
it, the six major countries were picked by former president Obama. For my final
project I’d like to look at this article side by side with the actual order and
see the discrepancies on what was said. It would be impossible to dissect this
one piece of literature without looking at the actual executive order itself. I
think it’s going to be extremely interesting to really sit down and look at
these two pieces.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/trump-travel-ban-iraq/
