1. Should factual products contain bias?
In the news of today, tragic events surface the newspaper. There are left wing
papers such as The Guardian and The Sun lenient on right wing parties.
With every story there is chance to agree or disagree with the factual evidence,
in the instance of reporting about child abuse or animal protection – in extreme
cases there is not a place for social debate as the offenders opinion would be
unflattering on raising awareness to protect the concern in our society.
Through my own research I have found that bias in factual products such as
leaflets can have an effect on the way we review the contingent effect of drinking
or drugs. The leaflets regarding these subjects are also pro public information, in
order to take sides with the majority of the audience and take a complacent
approach to the way we deal with it. Bias in this type of factual writing can also
occur when there is an agenda to be seen to, the agenda to cut down on alcohol,
for instance.
Though bias is a critical approach when having an agenda it can also raise
questions in the lower cases. In the news today there are fewer articles on what
we drink and how much we should have in admission and therefore who is
looking at the audience and what part of the audience does the motive sit with.
There can be many good ways of seeing bias in a newspaper, if the newspaper is
printed in a local area; the newspaper is then bias to that town or city. I have also
thought that this type of bias can promote the small – town, this is all well for
using this form as there is no factual storyline or based evidence regarding an
argument.
Going back to the way newspaper deals with bias. News stories typically have a
beginning, middle and end; with most being ambiguous this controversy creates
drama and creates a good selling point. With reference to
http://rhetorica.net/bias.htm a narrative bias has a master which sticks to the
way people act and the competing journalists running the same story. In this
frame, a selling point is what a journalist aims for – the story could be regarding
sport or travel etc and the bias needs to attract the readers. Sometimes narrative
bias can have dismissal on the reader as they stand by being anti ambiguous.
When someone knows the truth to a story it can be difficult to create a negative
or positive master atmosphere.
One particular example of a negative aura of bias is The Sun newspaper running
the story on the Hillsborough tragedy. Without becoming too politically in debt,
the leaders at the time were Tory – Margaret Thatcher as the Prime Minister.
There were a lot of times where the facts were being relayed inappropriately and
brought a big level of ambiguity. An opinion needed to come forward on both
parties, as the story run at the time was heavily distressing.
2. The newspaper was extremely biased towards its political views and this
interrupted the demeanor of being publically friendly. A lot went on behind the
scenes, which the newspaper didn’t print however this goes back to the narrative
bias during the way certain people acted and this influenced the way the cover
was written.
This type of political bias occurring has made me feel that bias shouldn’t have a
place in the news as there needs to be a social debate and be more open to
expressing the opinions of others. Some can blame that the evidence is hard to
gather however The Sun was determined to pin point who would get the blame.
As the truth is finally being shown, the journalist at the time said that his words
were a fundamental mistake.
“The mistake was that I believed what an MP said. It was a Tory MP.” – Kelvin
Mackenzie.
Although what was written can never be retracted, the bias is still heavily
implemented and acted on the way people perceived the newspaper afterwards.
Bias can never be a good thing with politics especially after the way this situation
was dealt with. It left multiple reasons for the story to be interpreted but there
was only one opinion that mattered in this instance.
The main reason of detecting bias from The Sun newspaper was the question of
who was to gain? Who had the positive benefit of branding people and writing
lies when there were 96 people dead without justice for the cause of it. To make
the situation worse, the political entity was in uproar, no one wanted to listen to
the tragedy behind the loss, and it was directing the blame and persecuting the
dead for their own death.
The evidence of an argument was also nowhere to be seen, creating an even
bigger bias towards the political stage. There is such thing as expediency bias, as
the journalist is working in a 24 hour cycle to complete the story, this leads to
portraying that there isn’t enough time to get enough evidence regarding quotes
and is seen as a scapegoat.
In conclusion to this argument, it has been hard to be balanced, as I am fully
against bias in factual products – newspapers especially. It seems like the way
out of lazy journalism is to agree with what is in front of you and to write about it
rather than having an opinion. It is also easy to confuse fact and opinion when a
subject so strong is available to public perception as newspapers rely on facts
from the public as well as the ones they have researched. It also feels like a
betrayal from the newspaper as it doesn’t have a truthful feeling – you don’t
know whether you are being lied to or where the truth is coming from. At this
moment in time I think that facts should stay as facts and opinions as opinions
this way there can be a flow in the news and lessen the concern on ambiguity.
