Fallacies in The News Media

News media discusses many different topics. From political to economic they all include things that happen in our world today. Political news today has many fallacies. Fallacies are things that are a mistaken belief and they consist of the straw man fallacy and the bandwagon fallacy etc. Fallacies are not really meant to be used on purpose but most of them are used when people have arguments and also when they need help persuading people even when they are telling a lie.

In 2016 President Donald Trump was campaigning for his spot in being president and was giving a speech. In his speech he uses the bandwagon fallacy, the bandwagon fallacy a logical fallacy that is an argument based on reasoning that is unsound. President Trump says “Wow, woah that is some group of people, thousands”. We don’t know exactly if there were thousands of people there to see President Trump. If there were so many people gathered to see him during his speech, then he must have been an applicable candidate. It makes him applicable because not just anyone is going to show up to listen to someone speak about how they feel towards certain things and how they can fix them. Overall the thousands of people were there to support his candidacy.

In the same speech President Donald Trump used another fallacy. The fallacy he uses was the straw man fallacy. The strawman fallacy is a misrepresentation of an opponent's argument, oversimplifying it or making the opponent weaker so the opponent can be defeated easily. President trump said “When do we beat Mexico at the border?”. He makes it an easier argument to take on due to the fact that he says that we are going to defeat Mexico and the only way is to build a wall. This makes his opponent weak, which is Mexico. President Trump makes them sound weak because Mexico is not there to be able to defend themselves from what he has to say or what he plans to do.

In 2016 Hillary Clinton was running for president and she gave her foreign policy speech targeting President Donald Trump. In her speech she uses the wishful thinking fallacy, wishful thinking is imagining or discussing something that is unlikely to happen such as a situation or a future event. Clinton says “I'm going to keep America’s security at the heart of my campaign”. Americans aren’t just electing any president and Hillary Clinton knows how bad the security is. This is a topic that she cannot accept because it is something that is happening in real life. If you really wanted to be the President of the United States you wouldn’t make comments that you cannot actually make happen.

In that same speech Hillary Clinton went on to use another fallacy. The Second fallacy used in her speech was the appeal to fear. This is a fallacy in which someone attempts to create an idea by attempting to increase fear towards an alternative. Hillary Clinton goes to say “We cannot put the security of our children and grandchildren in Donald Trump's Hands, we cannot let him roll the dice with America this is a man who said that more countries should have nuclear weapons including Saudi Arabia.” In this case, Hillary Clinton uses Trump to increase fears of her audience so that they could vote for her instead of Trump. This made people think President Trump was a scary man and that he was capable of making scary things happen. Clinton made people fear him so that she could get their vote.

In conclusion fallacies are everywhere and are used in different concepts. Sometimes people don’t know that they use them. In this case fallacies can be used politically in different ways. There are many fallacies. Fallacies like the bandwagon fallacy, the strawman fallacy, the wishful thinking fallacy, and the appeal to fear are only a few of the many fallacies. There are any other cases in which you could use fallacies it or either support what you are talking about or either an opposing side on a topic. In this case used politically it can ranges from different topics.