From the very beginning, the MSNBC article, whose headline reads, “Judge hears arguments over Arizona immigration law,” did not seem to have a slant on what it was reporting. The article presented the facts, telling about Phoenix federal judge, Susan Bolton’s, decision over whether or not SB-1070 can be blocked before it is to go into effect this Thursday, based on charges by its opponents that it is unconstitutional for trying to supersede existing federal immigration law (Cooper). The article discusses the many points of opposition to the law, including the ACLU’s charge that SB-1070 is “unconstitutional and dangerous” (Cooper) and Arizona’s defense of SB-1070 as necessary in the absence of federal action, without leaning toward either side of the issue by presenting each side in flat, non-descriptive language. More importantly, the article focuses on the controversial parts of the law (which spurred the legal action against SB-1070) and Judge Bolton’s reaction to SB-1070 opponents, which indicates that she will probably not block the entire law from taking effect, but just the problematic parts of it. The article ends with a general, brief overview/re-cap about the controversy surrounding the law since its introduction and the backlash it has produced. However, this article was very long, perhaps because it tried to capture each important detail. This causes the article to seem unorganized and like it’s trying to cram too much into one article.
In stark contrast, the New York Times (NYT) article begins with a polarizing headline: “U.S. Lays Out Case Against Arizona Law,” which is immediately followed by a picture of (seemingly angry) protesters against SB-1070 as they march:
Angry protestors
Source: New York Times
Taken together, the headline and initial photo seem to suggest a strong opposition from the rest of the United States against Arizona andSB-1070, essentially pitting them as the “bad guys” in the debate. The article itself hits on many of the same points made in the MSNBC article, but a huge difference is evident in the extra parts that are present in the NYT article and how they are presented/discussed. For example, in the very first sentence, the NYT article refers to SB-1070 as “Arizona’s stringent new immigration law” (McKinley). This contrast to MSNBC’s non-descriptive “The Arizona immigration law” (Cooper) gives a slant to the way SB-1070 is viewed, once again putting it in a negative light. This is bolstered by the article’s description of SB-1070 as giving police the power to “demand some proof of citizenship from people they suspect are illegal immigrants” (McKinley). The use of the word demand instead of a phrase like “ask about” gives SB-1070 a more threatening, negative tone. Furthermore, the NYT article focuses more on the debates from the crowds outside of the courtroom than those inside. This is not a source of slant in itself, but it is followed by a depiction of SB-1070 supporters personified in Charlene Greenwood, an unemployed, gun-toting Tea Party member who views supporters of illegal immigrants as “traitors” (McKinley). The article ends by contrasting this image of the nutty SB-1070 supporter with the image of illegal immigrants, personified in Rudy Gomez, a hardworking illegal immigrant who has been a roofer since 1997, has four children that he fears may be deported under SB-1070, and who states that he is not doing anything wrong because the United States is his home. The contrast between these two depictions is clearly meant to invoke sympathy for the illegal immigrant side, while painting the SB-1070 side in a negative light, which indicates some liberal slant to the reporting of the issue.
After the NYT article, I was surprised to find that USA Today had run the exact same article that MSNBC had run, verbatim. It was presented in largely the same way (no images, same neutral headline), and so I moved on to the BBC’s report on this topic. The BBC article’s headline, which read, “Arizona court hears challenges against immigration law,” was similar to the USA Today/MSNBC articles’ headlines. However, the BBC article was much shorter and streamlined than the USA Today/MSNBC articles, and had a very matter-of-fact tone, which reads like an introduction to the controversy surrounding SB-1070. The formal tone allows the article to present just the facts about the issue from both sides, such as the “widespread support among the public” for SB-1070 but also the racial profiling concerns that discussed at the end (BBC). Finally, the focus of the BBC article seems to skip over most of the heated debate and controversy over SB-1070 (illustrated in the articles from the U.S. in the focus on the crowds that had gathered outside the courtroom and the protesters) in favor of just presenting the issues that Judge Bolton had to make a decision on. As expected, the BBC article seems more balanced than the USA Today/MSNBC articles and the New York Times article.
Finally, I looked at an article from a Mexico City newspaper, El Universal, about Judge Bolton hearing both sides’ arguments about SB-1070. I honestly expected to be more liberally biased towards the opponents of SB-1070 simply because most of the focus for immigration reform is pointed at Mexico. However, the article in El Universal was actually very factual as well, mirroring the matter-of-fact tone in the BBC article, and even at some points exact parts from the BBC article, and just reporting on Judge Bolton postponing issuing a ruling on the law, and on the facts surrounding both sides of the issues’ opposition (mentioning in specific the ACLU again and also the Justice Department attorneys), rather than presenting a specific stance on the law itself. The article in El Universal, then, was actually less slanted and better presented than those from the United States’ news sources.
The five articles that I read had many elements in common with each other, as expected. However, the differences in the way the news was presented created a difference in the overall tone of each article. Therefore, though the foreign news sources (BBC and El Universal) had the most balanced reporting of Judge Bolton’s hearing of the cases against SB-1070, two U.S. sources (USA Today and MSNBC) also gave fairly balanced reports, though they suffered from too much detail. Surprisingly, the New York Times gave the most slanted report on the judge’s decision, which may reflect either the views of the author of the article, or perhaps the demographic to whom the New York Times serves.
As I had learned in my Asian American Civil Rights & the Law class, under the 14th Amendment, due process, the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law, but this portion often applies to U.S. Citizens only. As for illegal immigrants working in the United States this is already a violation of the law, violators are unlikely to be able to escape the law. However, for a state to mandate its own immigration law, the U.S. Supreme Court can rule it unconstitutional because federal power overrules state power.
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