News frames local conflicts as reason versus emotion rather than rival analyses.
Evidence
Like officials, reporters characterized activists as ‘‘emotional’’ and experts as rational. ‘‘Hazardous waste issues are so emotional it’s hard to come to a rational, technical solution,’’ an official claimed in one article (‘‘Swift River Vote Bars Waste of ChemWaste Corp. from Plant’’). The ‘‘balance’’ was portrayed as being between reason and feeling, not between two competing analyses. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1551
Categorization
- corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1551
- XREF: connects to: Media balance reproduces the shared presuppositions that bracket political disagreement; Broadcasting’s formal balance of two sides distorts unequal real-world conflicts; Press framing of a language dispute can overwhelm the environmental substance of a struggle. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 450