"The House and the Senate engaged in angry, intensely partisan debate on Thursday over the war in Iraq, as Republicans sought to rally support for the Bush administration's policies and exploit Democratic divisions in an election year shadowed by unease over the war."
I by no means consider myself a supporter of the war in Iraq, or of our president in general, but as a student of journalism, I do have a few problem with this first paragraph.
The phrase "exploit Democratic divisions" engages in a news story taboo called editorializing, which is the practice of expressing an opinion as if writing an editorial piece. In short, the above mentioned phrase gives the story a liberal bias, taking away from its credibility. I had originally intended to write this piece as a criticism of Senator Mitch McConnel's act of forcing Senator John Kerry's withdrawal amendment to be voted on, which Senator Kerry was saving so he could discuss issues for improvement of his amendment, or of representative Charlie Norwood's exploitation of the dichotomy between Al Qaeda and the United States, but I felt that addressing the issue of media bias was the most pressing topic of the story. As I mentioned above, it takes away from the credibility of what was otherwise a good story.
I like the New York Times. I believe it is one of the best staffed newspapers in the country, and I think their writing is engaging and informative. I would like to see less bias in future stories, especially concerning politics.
1 comment:
Bryan-what is ironic is that the main stream media continue to deny that there is no bias in the media. A great book to read is one by Bernard Goldberg. He was an award winning journalist and worked for CBS for almost 30 years until he wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal accusing the media of bias. He was basically run out of the job. He has three best sellers on the subject.
Keep up the good work. It's not so much what you say, but how you say it.
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