Last Week In The News
May 14-21: Buffalo Shooting, Virus Cases, Ukraine/Russia, Amber Heard Johnny Depp
Note: This post is a commentary on a top-down news analysis based on five key media sources: Fox, CNN, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.
Here’s what everyone’s talking about
Buffalo Shooting
All sources unanimously covered the Buffalo shooting and acknowledged it as a hate crime, at least somewhere on their front page. CNN and NYTimes highlighted the attack as racially motivated in the headline itself while Fox did not.
CNN: “Police: 10 killed in racially motivated shooting at Buffalo supermarket”
Fox News: “Police uncover shooting suspect had plans to continue rampage after deadly attack at supermarket”
New York Times: “Gunman Kills 10 at Buffalo Supermarket in Racially Motivated Attack”
Only further down the front page did Fox mention that the crime was being investigated as a hate crime: “FBI investigating Buffalo grocery store shooting as hate crime.”
NYTimes capitalizes on the rise of Covid Cases
NYTimes: “U.S. Officials Warn of Substantial Increase in Virus Cases”
While Covid-19 cases are certainly rising, other outlets don’t make much of it. Most people seem to be getting on managing Covid in their lives, as they do all of their other health concerns. However, NYTimes emphasis on Covid implies the engagement of their readers in the form of worry/anxiety. Unlike NYTimes, CNN is sharing helpful resource-type articles like “Dr. Leana Wen explains what to do if you get Covid now” and “US households can now order 8 more free Covid tests from the government”
Fox News highlights rising cases of … not Covid
Here was the headline:
Major US city investigating possible case of rare virus amid global outbreaks
Subtext: New York City health officials said they are investigating a possible case of monkeypox one day after Massachusetts officials confirmed the first U.S. case this year
Fox News is covering every drop of the juicy Amber Heard Johnny Depp Trial
Depp’s lawyer uses Amber Heard's own words against her during testy trial exchange
This was the top headline on Fox New’s front page on Tuesday May 17th, implying something quite interesting about their editorial ranking - nothing else happened in the world that was worth covering above the Heard Depp Trial.
Fox News coverage of this trial over the past week far outpaces other mainstream outlets:
CNN is focusing on the war
CNN is covering the play-by-play of the war, unlike any other outlet.
Their top headline on Thursday May 19th is incredibly specific, with a town that likely none of its readers have ever heard of:
The contours of war are large and complicated, focusing on any single attack may cause the reader to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Stories you may have missed
If you read Fox News, these stories were emphasized by the outlets below
If you read CNN, these stories were emphasized in the outlets listed below
As always, all the data and visualizations are available on Observable - dive deeper, and please call out the issues you’ll see so we can improve our algorithms to present you with the best data possible.