Breibart News and Salon.com Reporting of Robert E. Lee Statue Removal

Analysis of Reporting of the Removal of the Robert E. Lee Statue by the Breibart News Newtwork and Salon.com
With the proliferation of the internet, social media, and mobile technology, access to information today is far much easier than it has ever been in human history. From any corner of the globe, information can now be received and disseminated on a real time basis. Nonetheless, identifying the truth from lies has increasingly become difficult in the wake of the digital revolution. With a plethora of online platforms offering news as events happen, propagating falsehoods has become as simple as retweeting a tweet or sharing a Facebook post. The removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia is one of the events that have been the subject of reporting in online news platforms. Based on three articles from the Breibart News Network and three articles from Salon.com relating to the removal of the statue, this paper analyzes how the event has been reported. Attention is specifically paid to when the event occurred and why it was newsworthy, how the two sites reported the event, as well as the influence of cultural background on the interpretation of the story.
The Robert E. Lee statue is located in Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, Virginia. Proposals to remove the statue date back to 2016. The initial proposal was followed by a series of divisions between city leaders, protests, lawsuits, and court injunctions, until it was vandalized on July 7, 2017. All through, the Breibart News Newtwork and Salon.com have published a series of stories relating to the event. Events surrounding the removal of the statue have attracted the attention of not only the Breibart News Newtwork and Salon.com, but also national and international media. The removal of the statue has come against the backdrop of the “Black Lives Matter” campaign – a campaign that has gained increased momentum in recent months advocating for respect for the African American community. The statues of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate soldiers honored throughout America have been interpreted by advocates of the Black Lives Matter campaign as embodiments of hate and racism. For these advocates, honoring people like Robert E. Lee is tantamount to celebrating the inhumane treatment they subjected African Americans to during their existence. Given that racism is a matter that has polarized America for decades, the newsworthy nature of the event is understandable.
The Breibart News Newtwork and Salon.com have extensively covered the event. This analysis, however, focuses on three selected articles from each site. The three articles selected from the Breibart News Network include “Virginia City Removes Nearly 100-Year-Old Statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee” by Warner Todd Huston, “Dem Sen Kaine: We Should Replace Robert E. Lee With Pocahotans” by Pam Key, and “CNN’s Lemon: Robert E Lee Statues are Like Naming a School After Osama bin Laden” by Pam Key. In the three articles, it is quite evident that supporters of the Black Lives Matter campaign or the opponents of White supremacy are the main subjects of the stories. The authors fairly provide the social context surrounding the event. As evident in the three articles, the removal of the statue is mainly informed by the oppression suffered by African Americans during the Civil War, with Robert E. Lee being a major perpetrator. From this context, the reader gets the sense that the removal of the statue is about erasing Confederate history and dignifying the African American community. This somehow eliminates reportorial bias, though the stories appear to lean towards the African American audience. Generally, there is little use of official or expert sources in the three articles. The authors mainly incorporate the opinions of commentators, such as Senator Tim Kaine in one of Key’s article and Charlottesville’s Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy in Huston’s article.
The three articles selected from Salon.com include Matthew Rozsa’s “Mike Pence’s Defense of Confederate Memorials is Actually Really Scary,” Jacob Sugarman’s “5 Quotes Proving John Kelly is as Authoritarian as Donald Trump,” and Robin Lindley’s “How a Racist is Made – and Unmade.” Similar to Breinbart News Network’s articles, Salon.com’s articles are anti-White supremacy. The three articles strongly criticize individuals opposed to the removal of Confederate statues, an indication of the authors’ support for the removal. Out of the three articles, one does not provide the social context of the story – Sugarman’s article. From this article, it is not clear what social context surrounds the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue. Also, out of the three articles, only one article incorporates the views of an expert – Lindley’s article. The article is based on the views of historian Charles B. Dew. Professor Dew is one of the most reputable experts and authors on matters racism and slavery. By incorporating his views, therefore, Lindley adds credibility to his story. Similar to Breinbart News Network’s articles, the other two articles are mainly based on the opinions of the reporters.
News outlets use a number of techniques to attract attention to their stories, such as bold headlines, excessive punctuation, and capitalized headings. Also, news outlets may make claims that a given story contains a secret. Such techniques are intended to sensationalize stories, hence attract the attention of the target audience. As Ben Frampton puts it, “if you cannot hold someone’s attention for a sentence, you have no hope of getting them to read the rest of your article.” Though not always, sensational headlines can be misleading. According to Ransohoff and Ransohoff, sensationalism can lead to “miscommunication” (185). The use of sensationalism is evident in both news outlets. All Breinbart News Network’s articles have capitalized and bolded headlines. Salon.com’s articles are not capitalized, but are bolded to achieve the same effect. Capitalizing and/or bolding the headlines makes then quite catchy and noticeable. Nonetheless, the headlines do not make outrageous claims.
How media information is interpreted may be influenced by many factors, but key among them is the reader’s cultural background and personal experience. According to David Vognar, “culture does matter quite a bit to how we behave and how we think.” One of the theories that explain the effect of culture on how people interpret phenomena or information is symbolic interactionism. Premised on human interaction concepts, this theory holds that “the way you act toward someone or something is based on the meaning that you have for a person or thing.” Therefore, “to effectively communicate, people use symbols with shared cultural meanings” (Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication).
Culture affects the interpretation of information because a given group of people share “a set of basic assumptions and values, orientations to life, beliefs, policies, procedures, and behavioral conventions” that “influence (but not determine) each member’s behavior and his or her interpretation of the ‘meaning’ of other people’s behavior” (Yu 83-84). Following from this, Whites, who comprised the majority, and African Americans, one of the racial minorities in the U.S., are likely to interpret the story differently. While African Americans are likely to relate with the story given the painful historical experiences of Blacks on account of figures like Robert E. Lee, a Caucasian individual may not attach any meaning to the story.
On the whole, the six selected articles provide information relating to the removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue in Charlotte, Virginia. The information in general is targeted to African Americans or supporters of the Black Lives Matter campaign. Though there is little use of information from experts or formal sources in the articles, a confirmation on FactCheck.org shows that the information is quite factual.


Works Cited
Frampton, Ben. “Clickbait: The Changing Face of Online Journalism.” BBC News. BBC News, 14 Sep. 2015. Web. 8 Nov. 2017.
Ransohoff, David F. and Richard M. Ransohoff. “Sensationalism in the Media: When Scientists and Journalists May Be Complicit Collaborators.” Effective Clinical Practice 4.4 (2001): 185-188.
Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing, 2016.
Vognar, David. “How Important is Culture in Shaping Our Behavior?” Huffington Post. Huffington Post, 1 Aug. 2012. Web. 8 Nov. 2017.
Yu, Qiufen. “Understanding the Impact of Culture on Interpretation: A Relevance Theoretic Perspective. Intercultural Communication Studies 33.3 (2014): 83-102.