News Story from Two Perspectives
The issue of the travel ban was very controversial, and displayed differently from various news agencies. Its core facts are not highly disputed, but the implications of them, however, are highly contested. At a legislative level, it blocks out immigrants from eight countries (Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, North Korea, and some people from Venezuela), and denies them access to the country. The debate comes in here: is this truly for national safety, or just anti-Muslim sentiments being passed off as concern for the country. An article from the Washington Post and another from the New York Times take opposing stances on this, and through their language we can see the argument the authors are trying to make, even if it is not explicitly stated.
The article from the Washington Post, titled “The travel ban is still a weapon in Trump’s anti-immigrant arsenal” clearly establishes the thesis, and continues to utilize language that places all of the blame on Trump and highlights the cruelty and inhumanity of the ban, especially when it is used due to what the author calls “toxic bigotry.” Through this alone, we can see that any claims of national security are automatically disregarded, and the true issue (at least as the author sees it) is presented. Words such as “punishingly narrow, vague and arbitrary” are used to highlight the flaws in the travel ban policy, with such random standards meaning that national security is not the true issue at hand, but rather racism being disguised as something else entirely. They continue to use words such as “desperate” and “merciless” as well as a continued emphasis on “children” to show the humanity of the immigrants that Trump is so quick to label terrorists and block out of the country.
On the other hand, the New York Times article, titled “Supreme Court Allows Trump Travel Ban to Take Effect” attempts to take a more neutral standpoint, but uses biased language that shows they are more lenient to the idea of the travel ban, and less willing to blame it on Trump and xenophobia. With the word “allows” in the title, from the get go, a lot of the heat is being taken away from Trump and being redirected at the Supreme Court, showing that others agreed with him and that this policy was not just an abuse of executive power. Even when referring to blocking people out of the country, rather than using words with negative connotations like barred, refused entry, or banned, the author refers to people affected by the travel ban as “unable to emigrate,” making it seem like a personal choice, rather than assigning blame to Trump. They continue on to say that immigrants are no longer able to “work, study, or travel” in the U.S. as opposed to the article which emphasized family separation and things regarding quality of life and connections with others, rather than things like working and studying which seem more menial.
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