Upon my initial research, I found that most news sites were following the same format by composing most of their reports with quotes and links to local city, state, and government information sources. I’ve spent a couple nights sifting through a variety of different articles, but nothing really has come up which has been purely opinion-based reporting. These of course are all established and accredited news site pertaining to local, regional, and/or national based stories. One site worth mentioning, which was a model example of excellent reporting, was wishtv.com. A staff report posted on Sep 23, 2020 included links to websites with information regarding the Corona virus, a timeline of recent events going all the way back to March for the state of Indiana, plus direct quotes from several public figures. (Reports, Sep. 23rd, 2020)

There are some stories I’ve come across that we’re clearly “masquerading as journalism”. An article I came across from the website Marketwatch.com, which covers a governor contracting Covid-19. While the article does have a bit of validity to it being a current event, the way in which it was reported seemed to track on a rather persuasive note. (Associated Press, Sep. 24th 2020)  There are, many others like this ranging from all different sides of the spectrum. OccupyDemocrats, WorldTruth, DailyMail, leading up to news sites with major followings such as Fox News or CNN have been known to publish more biased articles than other sites such as PBS, BBC, or AP news. I did some digging and was able to find a pretty useful site which lists quite a few major news sources and categorizes them based on Left and Right leaning bias. (Allsides)

Now, switching over to do my database search, I noticed the tone of these articles took a much more serious and neutral (straight forward) approach to reporting the stories. Again, appropriate use of quotes with citations to relevant articles and other outside resources. While not as engaging or “eye catching” as other online articles, these stories seemed to fit a more classic definition of honest reporting.

Bibliography

Allsides. (n.d.). Media Bias Ratings. Allsides.com, https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings.

Associated Press. (Sep. 24th 2020). Missouri’s anti-mask-mandate governor and his wife have contracted COVID-19. Marketwatch.com, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/missouris-anti-mask-mandate-governor-and-his-wife-have-contracted-covid-19-2020-09-24.

Reports, S. (Sep. 23rd, 2020). Mask mandate to continue through Oct. 17 but Indiana drops other restrictions. www.wishtv.com, https://www.wishtv.com/news/indiana-news/indiana-mask-mandate-to-continue-but-state-to-end-limits-on-gatherings/.