The importance of making critical evaluations of news stories come to play in the recent story about the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case. This is a story about a young black teenager and a neighborhood watchman that shot and killed young Trayvon. Many news stations reported the story showing pictures of both of them that had been taken years prior to the actual event. Trayvon’s pictures showed him as an innocent boy and Zimmerman as upset and angry in a much earlier mug shot. The media also showed bias to both these individuals and seemed to be concerned with sensationalism, rather than finding out the true facts in the case. The concern they showed at the time the story broke, appeared to be geared towards selling the story and building the story into a racially motivated incident. The news was not completely clear or accurate and the investigative methods were not sufficient in either depth or breadth. The stories promoted the idea that Trayvon was an innocent young black kid who just happened to be out late at night and that Zimmerman was just looking to act as judge, jury and executioner. The pictures of George Zimmerman seemed to promote prejudice and negative emotions from the audience. They used bias in the news by deliberately ignoring more current pictures of both these individuals. Many of the news channels seemed to deliberately ignore the truth of the story regarding what type of people both Trayvon and George were. A mug shot of a younger angry looking Zimmerman and a more recent picture shows Zimmerman in a dress coat and tie with him clearly smiling shows a distinct disregreard for truthful reporting and bias in reporting. The news clearly chose to ignore any alternative perspectives in regards to this story. The stories focused on accusing Zimmerman of being an angry, trigger happy watchman who took it upon himself to deliver justice without waiting for the police to show…
* Over the last decade, we have seen a significant increase in “opinion-based” news and news organizations. Using agenda setting and framing --You should be able to discuss the ways in which “opinion-based” news (right or left) could impact audience’s perceptions of the issue, of politics, and of news credibility and bias?…
We can recognize bias by finding _ _ _ _ _ _ opinions. Bias is useful…
In “Violent Rhetoric and Arizona Politics” by Nathan Thornburgh, the author tries to get the message across that rumors can lead to more violence, than what actually happens. In a time where there are rumors flying, and people getting killed and a congresswoman shot because of them, Thornburgh is out there to prove his point that perhaps rumors are leading to all of this violence in Arizona. However his argument would have been more effective had he shown less bias, been a bit less dismissive and had provided more evidence and statistics to back up his paper. While not all bias is bad, too much can lead to an argument being less effective.…
In Gendler’s paper, On the Epistemic Costs of Implicit Bias, the dilemma between social knowledge and unfair treatment is presented and discussed. Gendler starts by presenting information on base rates and how background information that can show to be extremely important can be mentally dismissed since our minds are not trained for statistical calculations of chance. Then, she speaks directly to the reader on how categorizing is something that we all do, in order to prove her point that mere knowledge of stereotypes can lead to categorizing in a way that can ignore base rates and other relevant information, leading to unfair treatment. Gendler presents the ethical-epistemic dilemma by showing that once knowledge is obtained, humans have an…
6. Define MEDIA BIAS. Describe evidence of bias- for or against- from the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi.…
An example of bias in the article is bias by selection of source. In the article the author, Bryan Dean Wright, uses a Harvard study were it was found that American police did not kill more black Americans than white Americans. He did however include the fact that black Americans were more likely to be handcuffed, pepper-sprayed, touched or pushed to the ground than white Americans, but following that he reasoned that only happens because our brains are wired to believe and follow stereotypes. He had little to nothing to support that black Americans are being treated less than white Americans.…
Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2008). The thinker’s guide for conscientious citizens on how to detect media bias &…
Although media bias is clearly seen in the news primarily serves as Goldberg's main focal point, his argument certainly falls between both, his passion and animosity. Goldberg's excessive emotional tone weakens the relevance to his case. In his introduction, Goldberg writes "…let me state without any fear whatsoever that I might be wrong: Anyone who writes a book to be vindictive is almost certainly insane…but my guess is it would be easier to give birth to triplets than write a book, especially if you've never written one before" (Goldberg 2001, 21). In insisting his motive was to respectively voice an acknowledged, yet unsettled issue of the liberal bias in the news' such a statement entails otherwise. This allegation not only imposes vengeance…
At what point does intelligent insight become biased opinion? Pitts treads on this line many times throughout this essay. While I do agree with him on his overarching points, it is of my experience that a healthy dose of skepticism works wonders in pointing out biases. That healthy dose of skepticism can easily reveal that Pitts in this essay is very biased.…
Manipulation is present in any representation, as a result of an authors inherent bias towards their own perspective. This bias causes an author to attempt to influence the perspective a reader will take on the text, whether this influence is intentional or otherwise. Geoffrey Robertson is one such author, whos collection of essays titled The Justice Game contains a number of techniques in order to sway readers to support his perspective on the legal cases which he writes about. Paul Waterhouse's current affairs story Would you let your kids do this? Is a television segment on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and its rising popularity as a sport, in which Waterhouse's bias against the sport is notably evident.…
Is this nature, nurture, or an interaction? Our goal in this publication is to help our readers lay a foundation for transforming the influence of the media on their lives. It is in all of our interests to critically assess, rather than mindlessly accept, news media pronouncements. Our hope is that we can aid readers to become more independent, insightful, and critical in responding to the content of news media messages and storiesIf objectivity or fairness in the construction of news stories is thought of as equivalent to presenting all the facts and only the facts (“All the news that’s fit to print”), objectivity and fairness is an illusion. No human knows more than a small percentage of the facts and it is not possible to present all the facts (even if one did know them). It isn’t even possible to present all the important facts, for many criteria compete for determining what is “impor- tant.”We must therefore always ask,“What has been left out of this article?”“What would I think if different facts had been highlighted here?”“What if this article had been written by those who hold a point of view opposite to the one embedded in the story…
Labelling bias occurs in everyday society. For example, within mental illness (Rosenhan, 1973). Evidence show that, labelling bias is putting, or forcing a unique individual in a specific group, and the assumptions others may have of that label (Fox & Stinnett, 1996). Labels are evocative, whether they are for the better, or for the worse. This goes to show that label bias are, too narrow and very limited of a conception to really define an individual.…
Political bias: “With one purpose only: to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy, of Boss Jim W. Gettys’ political machine—now in complete control of the government of this State!” His opinion of this groups’ work is judgmental.…
It’s a warm autumn afternoon. I’m on a bus making its way to the centre of the city. I can feel the sun gently warming my skin even though the windows of the bus are covered in dull advertisements. The overload of advertisements annoy me when I go to the city. I’m looking for a new hoodie, not a mortgage. I get off the bus at the second to last stop so I can gaze upon the lavish central train station before I enter the shopping centre which is actually closer to the final stop. The building always lightens my mood. I appreciate the neo-baroque style because it has the ability to take me back to simpler times and the style is rarely used in our region. When you stand in the middle of…