On November 6, 2024, The Daily Universe, the official student newspaper of BYU, published an article by the Associated Press announcing the victory of President-elect Donald Trump. In 2020, however, The Daily Universe published a student-written article on the victory of then-President-elect Joe Biden. A comparison of the two articles reveals a blatant discrepancy in tone and content, with an obvious bias against President Donald Trump.
The article published by The Daily Universe shortly after the election of President Joe Biden is brief, to the point, and, overall, a positive announcement of the upcoming presidency. For example, the article mentions Kamala Harris’ historic position as “the first female vice president” and highlights her “Indian and Jamaican” heritage. Then, halfway through, The Daily Universe highlights an uplifting quote from President Biden’s campaign statement:
With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.
Concluding, the article briefly mentions President Trump’s impending attempt to question the integrity of the election.
The Associated Press article, republished by The Daily Universe last week, contrasts significantly with the aforementioned article written four years prior. The first paragraph reveals the evident bias:
Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States on Wednesday, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.
Indeed, it is difficult to find neutral or Trump-favorable comments in the entire article. In describing Trump, the Associated Press labels him as “misogynistic” and “racist,” claiming he “often borrow[ed] language from dictators” and that his “image of hypermasculinity resonated with angry voters.” These claims are made without citations or references as if they were “public knowledge.”
The Associated Press article, published by The Daily Universe, merely repeats the same left-wing talking points given during the last few years: Trump is a racist; Trump is a misogynist; Trump is anti-democratic; Trump is unconstitutional; and, ultimately, “Trump is everything we don’t like.” The question arises, then, as to why The Daily Universe would merely republish a biased, apparently anti-Trump article by the Associated Press when they could’ve assigned a student to report on Trump’s victory as they did in the 2020 presidential election.
The Cougar Chronicle reached out to The Daily Universe, asking the following three questions:
- Why did The Daily Universe decide to republish an article rather than assign a student to write on Trump’s victory?
- Why did The Daily Universe neglect to provide references and citations to the claims made in the AP article?
- Does The Daily Universe believe the language and content of the AP article is biased?
The Daily Universe responded with the following statement:
We are continuing to work on our 2024 election coverage at The Daily Universe. Our coverage of the election this year will be different from four years ago. In 2020, BYU did not allow travel because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, in the first week of November, 27 students, faculty and staff from the BYU School of Communications were in Washington, D.C. covering the election. We spent the week working on dozens of stories about the election in D.C., Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The students are still doing post-production work on those stories. They will be published on our YouTube channel as part of a special election magazine show and the stories will also appear at universe.byu.edu. As a student news organization our focus during the week of the election was on news gathering on the East Coast. During that time we re-published a story from the Associated Press and an article written by a student reporter in Provo summarizing the election.
We look forward to sharing the variety of stories students were able to produce from our nation’s capital during election week.
While the statement does explain the relative lack of articles covering the election generally, The Daily Universe fails to explicitly mention why a student could not have written about Trump’s victory rather than republish the biased Associated Press article. For context, The Daily Universe’s 2020 presidential election article consisted of a mere 138 words, a relatively easy word count to reach, even while traveling in Washington, D.C.
Written by: The Cougar Chronicle
The Cougar Chronicle is an independent student-run newspaper and is not affiliated with Brigham Young University or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Cover Photo Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/timeline-biden-withdrawal-trump-debate-25-days-us-politics-rcna162965
In 1940 Albert Einstein wrote, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds”. This because “Great Sprits” always “Stand For Something”.
Those with mediocre minds will do all they can to discredit Donald Trump. Sadly, the same mediocre minded people usually do all they can to discredit the founding fathers of America.
Let’s hope that those at The Daily Universe who write upcoming articles about Trump are great spirits and willing to stand for what is right.