In the recent Beacon article entitled “Trump VS. Obama: What Each Accomplished in Year 1” Culture Editor, Enrique Eguiguren pit the two presidents against each other in an undoubtedly biased fashion. The beginning of Enrique Eguiguren’s article touches on the United States economy carefully picking which bits of information he actually wanted to outline. The article states, “When he [Obama] arrived in office, the national debt was hovering around $10.6 trillion and the national deficit was somewhere between $1.2 trillion and $1.3 trillion, depending on the analyst you talk to.” Enrique made no mention of Trump’s fiscal plan for comparison, instead trying to shed light on the high deficit under the Obama administration. Trump’s new fiscal plan, if passed will leave the US at a budget deficit of a projected $392 billion, over 50% less of the deficit we were left with under Obama’s plan. Instead of giving numbers to compare, Enrique uses unemployment as Trump’s portion of the economic comparison, stating that although unemployment is very low, “It should be noted, that this isn’t necessarily good news, as unemployment rates this low generally come towards the end of the ‘boom’ section of  boom and bust cycle.” This is deceiving for multiple reasons. Ronald Reagan inherited the country while it was in recession, yet he brought the economy to a strong boom consistently through his 8 year presidency with low unemployment rates and the country didn’t see another recession until the second year of the H.W. Bush administration.

The next section, entitled Policy, was obviously biased about the legislation Obama had passed. The first being the anti-hate crime legislation. All the hate-crime legislation allowed for was the arrest of individuals for claims… Yes, claims… Or simply to add another charge on top of a crime someone had done. For example, a gay man being beaten would be considered assault with a hate crime charge stacked on top of it, however if said gay had beaten a straight cis-gendered male it would only be assault. In 2017, during a Congressional meeting, hate speech was ruled to be protected under the First Amendment because hate speech is generally defined as offensive language that differs per person which is potentially dangerous especially for discussion and debate. When we start banning things we find offensive, we allow ourselves to be more sensitive and less tolerant of other things, which would be a tragedy in a country that was built on the premise of freedom. The mention of Obama’s green energy legislation was also misleading. Kari Norgaard of the University of Oregon had written a statement to President Obama asking to put an end to this horrible epidemic of global warming! She forgot one thing, the Earth hasn’t actually been heating up while we produce, the hottest years in United States history were actually reported by NASA to be in the 1930s, after the industrial revolution. Recently NASA even admitted that Antarctica had been getting colder despite the melting of ice caps, which has pushed them and other individuals conducting climate change studies to shift their belief on climate change from human production to our own sun’s climate. Obama had known about these hypothesis, but still regulated energy allowing the EPA free reign to define exactly what they felt was malicious to earth, including building a home near a lake.

Enrique had also made a mention that Obama had failed to jail the bankers responsible for the recession, when it was, in fact, a crisis Obama had helped bite into. President Obama met with the CEOs of large banks on April 3, 2009 forcing the banks to take TARP (Troubled Asset Relief) money which would give the federal government a portion of the bank. He also refused repayment of TARP money from banks who didn’t want the government in their corporations. He would even administer tests to the banks to see if they were “stable” (which was never defined) and if they were found not to be, he would force them to take more TARP money, or force them to make their government non-voting shares into common stock which would give the US government more ownership of that bank. Obama was the president of corporate hostile takeover.

Enrique’s last part of his Policy section, and the final point I will touch on is his bias about the Trump accomplishments. He states, “ Trump has passed the GOP tax plan, however, he hasn’t yet made any of his other promises of bringing jobs back or building a Mexican border wall a reality.” Trump made the promise of a 3% growth in GDP which people said wouldn’t be possible, we reached that goal. The Border wall currently has prototypes that were constructed and being tested, and are waiting for approval from Congress. Additionally, multiple corporations like Apple and General Motors are moving their manufacturing facilities back to the US, so we can add that to the list of lies in the article in question.

Everybody has biases, but in journalism it is important to separate personal beliefs from the truth. Especially when you are entrusted with the information people see.