CNN speaks truth to power. Which is the rightful place of a proper Fourth Estate. Unfortunately, Trump has a poor relationship with truth. That's the conflict.
I would argue that while CNN has factual reporting in their regular news segments, the segments themselves are biased to provide a pro-Democratic news line. Fox News regular segments are similarly biased to provide pro-Republican news lines. I actually did a comparison two weeks ago since this came up with another person here. I meant to go back and talk to him about it, but I never found time.
CNN News started their news on July 29th with COVID-19 analysis by John King, and then they talked about how the House, Senate, and White House could not come to an agreement on the new relief program. They gave Trump's reason as to why an agreement could not be reached and then provided more details about the Democrats' side of things from Phil Mattingly, "What The President described isn't even close to the reality of the talks ... The President said the Democrats won't make the payments high enough. Is not the issue that the Republicans, including The President's team, keep saying the Democrats want to spend too much, not too little." Some of the wording does show a bit of bias, but I do think the content is factual.
Fox News started their news on July 29th with "Portland sees the 62nd night of unrest," showing what appeared to be fireworks going off in the streets. William La Jeunesse reported from Portland, "Now there's a disagreement inside the protests, if you will, about tactics. Some want these to be peaceful; others are more confrontational." They also showed segments of Barr's testimony regarding the protests damaging the federal courthouse. The next segment was about Trump's conversation with Putin and his decision not to discuss the bounties by the Taliban placed on US soldiers, as outlined in the Axios interview. As in the CNN case, the wording showed a slight bias, in this case toward Republican viewers, but overall seemed to present facts.
The stories networks choose to focus on can show bias just as much as how the stories are portrayed.
