I recently saw in a post online someone use a phrase that essentially means something like when a journalist uses a word with a negative connotation when trying to frame an idea they don't like but if someone they do like does it then they might describe it with more positive wording.
It's similar to hypocrisy, spin, or propaganda but it contains the name of the person who coined it, like "smith verb" or something like that. I remember reading about the phrase and it was coined by a journalist.
To talk them down is one term. Similar to putting them down.
A word smith, or verb smith if you will shapes language the way a blacksmith shapes iron. in talking them down a speaker can phrase a description so as to make it far less appealing or convincing. A more severe and obvious method is talking trash.
I think what you are describing in the journalist is simple bias if the same ideas are described to be better from one source than another. Journalists have a goal in their delivery that is no longer unbiased.
