Comparing News: One Story / Four Outlets

by Shawn K. Inlow

Last Tuesday, July 22, 2025, Elizabeth Elkind of Fox News Digital had perhaps the most authoritative reporting on the story of the day.  You just might never have read it by the way it was laid out.

You might be shocked to hear me tossing kudos to Ms. Elkind since you know how I feel about Fox News' cable channel:  23 parts opinion to 1 part news.  But we are after the facts at explusy.blogspot.com.  And if you've been tagging along, then you know we've reduced the equation to Sources + Credibility + Evidence = Critical Thinking.

I was threatening in last week's thrilling episode on Evidence to go from the hypothetical to the real world by examining the first major news story that came along.  That story happened to revolve around how the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, R-Mississippi, adjourned the house for summer break rather than be forced to vote on the release of the secret investigative files of the late multi-millionaire pedophile and convicted sex-trafficker to the stars, Jeffrey Epstein.

In the space of one click, I had the top four treatments I could find and, without prejudice, saved those links for you to look at.

The first was this one: "The Epstein Recess - Republicans FLEE Congress over Epstein Scandal."  This story was a YouTube video from MSNBC and was hosted by former W. Bush White House Communication Director Nicolle Wallace.

The second was this one: "Johnson Cuts Short House Business to Avoid Vote on Releasing Epstein Files."  This story was from the New York Times by Times Congressional Correspondents Annie Karni and Michael Gold.

The third was this one: "US House calls early summer recess to block voting on release of Epstein files."  This story was by Chris Stein, a Washington, D.C. based reporter for the publicly owned British newspaper, The Guardian.

And the fourth one was by Ms. Elkind: "Not going away" - Inside the Epstein drama that's thrown the House GOP into chaos."  

Each of these stories gets to the point.  But if you compare them, you can see some important differences that a Critical Thinker might find telling.  You have each link, and if you put them up side by side by side by side, I'd be interested in what you think the differences are.

Before we even get to applying our formula here, there is an apparent difference just in the headlines of the stories.  Can you see it?  Each headline is getting at the story in its own way, but the MSNBC story uses all caps "FLEE" for a grabbier headline.  Using the word "flee" might indicate terror or fear like a good gotcha headline might.  The headline isn't wrong, but it carries some emotional weight or color.  Maybe a better headline might have been: "The Epstein Recess - Congressional Republicans Adjourn Early over Epstein Scandal."

The Times uses "Cuts Short House Business" instead of "flee."  The Guardian uses "calls early summer recess" instead of "flee."  I would say, on the incendiary scale, the Fox story headline places second with, "drama that's thrown the GOP house into chaos."

Using our formula, if we're just counting up SOURCES for each of these stories, the score is, in order, 9 to 8 to 7 to a whopping 19 over at Fox News Digital.  Why?  My guess is that Elkind, because she works at Fox, has far greater access to Republican legislators.

When we get to the credibility of those sources - how well you can depend on them - we get some variance too.

The MSNBC piece opens with a video of Democratic Senator Chuck Shumer of New York calling the early recess "The Epstein Recess" and sets the tone for the panel discussion to follow.  Nicolle Wallace then introduces her guests, Sam Stein and Michele Norris.  Stein is a long experienced journalist and has for a year served as the Editor of The Bulwark, a center-right news outlet founded by "never-Trump" conservatives.  Michele Norris is an award-winning journalist who has worked most prominently at ABC and NPR.

Wallace then unnecessarily ties a New York Times headline (indeed, the same one we're using for comparison above) to an opinion quote by liberal commentator Rachel Maddow.  

She also uses a color term to describe Republicans' "blind" loyalty to Trump.  She could have said, "forcing them to choose between their loyalty to Donald Trump and their constituents."  Much of the reporting in the Times, The Guardian and on Fox Digital describes republican loyalties, but the term "blind" is deciding for you.

The crux of the MSNBC piece is reporting two important stories; one, the times piece we've discussed already and later on, and the other a fresh story from the Wall Street Journal, "Justice Department Tells Donald Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files."

The NYT and the WSJ stories stand on their own and are credible.  The panel discussion that follows is a colorful and left-leaning opinion on what these stories mean.

The Times and Guardian stories play it pretty straight, using many of the same sources (Johnson, Burchett, Massie from the Republican side) as well as a few differing voices from the Democratic side.  Both articles expose how the Republican majority is conflicted and how Democrats are using this division to tie Trump to Epstein.

Neither the Times nor the Guardian use any color language in their reporting.

The sources for the Fox piece are pretty interesting in that at least nine (half) of them by my count are anonymous.  Most of them, however, are providing vivid quotes helping to describe the division among Republicans.  Sources not named include, "another GOP lawmaker," "two other House Republicans," "several people," "one," "three more House Republicans," "one person," "multiple lawmakers" and "several" House Republicans and "one House Republican."

What is happening here is Elkind is respecting her sources' wishes to not be named in print.  Clearly, the issue is a hot one for Republicans who want to talk about the situation but don't want to cross either the president or their constituents, who seem to be on opposing sides of the story.  Elkind, by using anonymous sources, is able to get at this tension in a real way that makes the story better.  The story covers the bases with the obvious named sources that the other stories also use.

But the thing that Fox News Digital does that does not show up in what I'm writing about here, but that you can clearly see by going to the linked web-page, is that they BURY Elkind's story.  Go have a look for yourself and report back here with what you observe.  I'll wait...

Okay. So, you see the headline:

"Not going away" - Inside the Epstein drama that's thrown the House GOP into chaos

Then below it, a "sub-head." "When you say the list is on your desk, and there's no list - You can't take that one back," one House Republican told Fox News Digital

Then the by-line, which is the way the reporter signs their name to the story that is to follow.  It is why print journalists have such credibility; they are signing their name on that report.  They are standing by it.  If an information you're looking at does not have a by-line, that's a big red flag.

But then, the main problem as I see it.  The next thing you get is a video that you can play after Elkind's headline and before you even get to Elkind's lead sentence.  It is an opinion piece by Howard Kurtz of Fox News and the headline on it is this:

"Trump Sues Wall Street Journal Over Story About Alleged Epstein Letter"

Remember, this was a piece of journalism about how the House of Representatives went into early recess to avoid voting to release the controversial Epstein files.  What the viewer is getting is a bait and switch to an opinion piece from THE WEEK BEFORE stressing how Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal over an entirely different story.

It goes on to use Laura Ingraham and CNN commentator Scott Jennings colorfully slamming the issue using language that makes the problems with the previous MSNBC item seem charming.  It's enough to make a Fox-type reader mad enough to stop reading, and I think that's the whole point.  I would love to see a study of how that layout affected whether or not Elkind's story got read.  I will bet you less than 5% (now, I'm guessing) actually read the whole way to the bottom the way we did.

So, Fox Digital has arguably the best story on an important national news story here.  What do they do with it? They hide it.  They bury it beneath a colorful opinion piece about (mostly) something else, and then put so many adds in the copy it is literally difficult to find the story, let alone finish reading it.

THIS, my friends, is how Fox disguises opinion with straight news.  The reporting by Elkind is very good, very authoritative and very revealing.  But Fox instead attempts to bait and switch readers with a video opinion clip that almost certainly means the reader won't get the benefit of their reporter's excellent reporting.

So let's add another habit to our Critical Thinking toolbox.  Maybe it's better to read the news and interact with it instead of just clicking on a video and having the news and your thinking spoon-fed to you.  A story with a by-line and with credible sources beats an opinion video any day.  And if you're just watching the cable opinion video, you're just being lazy.  Don't be lazy.  Read your news, don't watch it.