Does the picture match the frame? A media framing analysis: CNN vs FOX. #BlackLivesMatter

May 25th, 2020 became a historical day when the death of a black man at the hands of the police was recorded on camera and went viral over the internet. (BBC News, 2020). That Monday officer Derek Chauvin took the life of George Floyd. Chauvin’s action, made public for the world to see, reignited the cause we all know today as the Black Lives Matter movement. Through a line of events, the Black Lives Matter movement has gotten a lot of news coverage worldwide. However, not all news stories convey the same message as news agencies tend to characterize their news towards their audiences (Watkins, 2001). As framing theory suggests, a story can be told in many different ways with the focus lying in how certain information is presented, and how this can influence the audience and their perception of this information. Based on this, a qualitative framing analysis is conducted on how events of the Black Lives Matter movement are framed considering the two news agencies CNN and Fox News. For this study, a qualitative content analysis is conducted through the means of analyzing online news articles from the CNN and Fox News website. The analysis process consist of a complementation of grounded theory and a thematic analysis. Based on the analysis several existing and some new news frames have been detected, compared to the five most common news frames proposed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000). The results implicate that differences in news framing can be found between the news agencies CNN and Fox News. As many studies suggest that news agencies cover news objectively and unbiased, this study provides an answer that contradicts this. Primary result show significant differences in news framing by CNN and Fox News and propose that CNN has a politically left-leaning bias, whereas Fox News has a politically right-leaning bias. Some limitation can be found in the nature of this study. As this study solely incorporates text driven data, recommendation for future research is made to incorporate audio and visual analysis as well.