task 2 bias
- 1. Should factual writing contain bias? Bias is a one-sided judgment that you agree with that is based on your past experiences and ideas. Being bias means you only have one view point on something and not having an open mind to other ideas. You can be bias to a person, sexuality, religion, social class, political party etc. Lots of newspaper contain bias, for example the daily mail are bias as they aremore right wing as they agree with the ideas that the conservatives createtherefore postarticle that promotethem rather than labour. Such as the guardian are moreleft wing supporting the Labour party in their articles. There are reasons why bias should be included in factual writing for example there are good thing about having a bias opinion in an article. By having a one- sided judgment, it means it is going to supportsomepeople’s opinions therefore they are going to enjoy this article much more and they are then more inclined to purchasethe newspaper, outlet again. Also, there is a positive effect for people who don’t agree with the opinion as this will help them be more open minded other people’s opinions and create view points for people. This gives people moreinformation to gain a further understanding on the subjectand therefore could help them change their mind and have a different view on the situation that they thoughtthey were against. An example of a positive effect bias has is the way people act. For example, if you were going to a party and your boss was wearing a fancy suit and dress very smartly because you are their employee you are likely to wear similar clothes to try impress him therefore being bias over the type of clothes you wear to fit in, this is positive type of bias that mostpeople have. Another example of why bias can be good in factual writing as it challenges people opinions more. If we had a newspaper that never gave their opinions people would justbelieve their opinions is the correctone and never argue againstit, having newspaper and magazine spread their opinions teaches people about the different sideof the problem encouraging them to read both sides instead of justtheirs. This will help people become more educated in the story and make them think abouttheir judgement more. Bias is a good thing as it allows people to have their say in how they feel. Not having bias in your writing is limiting the way a person can think. There is not a right way to think and by not allowing people to have these judgments restricts their views. An example of how being bias is a good thing is the guardian publishing a story on Jeremy Corbyn Labour leader and his responseto spy story. In this article, they talk about how the rumour got
- 2. out and how he dealed with it. They did not agree with the statement and say he is a spy because the guardian is a left-wing newspaper as the mainly supportLabour in the articles. By this they made surethey got all the facts across to show he is not instead of trying to paint him as one thereforewhen people who agreed with this statement read the article will learn the facts and stories about how he is not one and will make them see the story in a different hopefully changing their opinion. Being bias can help get the truth out to those who thought wrong. Here they have spoken abouthow the allegations have been rejected to show people that he is not a spy showing thatthey are on his side instead of trying to make it out like he is. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/20/jeremy-corbyn-calls- czech-spy-allegations-nonsense However, being bias in writing can be a bad thing. For example, becausethe article is one sided they are going to promote the story, causeor person they agree with. By doing this they can cherry pick certain facts and phrases to supporttheir argument. The definition of Cherry picking is to pick only the best people or things froma group, so that only people or things that are less good remain: An example of cherry picking is the daily mail new stories was based on a scientific paper by Sigman and biologist. The paper misrepresented the stories and usecherry picking to select the study’s thatonly supported Sigman’s view. The problem with this is as its only presenting half the evidence letting people thinking that’s the only evidence provided. They did because they got somestick from Aric Sigman therefore made him look bad by cherry picking certain parts of the information therefore making people believe bad things or making them focus on the bad parts. This article is from the guardian and they are supporting the science paper and not the daily mail. This is shown as they talk about the bad ting the daily mail did when talking about this paper, the guardian did this to show their audience that the daily mail isn’t trustworthy and bias but being doing this cause them to be bias as they are rival paper and therefore they are talking bad
- 3. about the other one to try make people think bad of them. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/23/bad-science-ben- goldacre Therefore, cherry picking can make stories seem different then they are and make the audience believe in something that exaggerated to make them agree with their opinion. Another reason why being bias in your writing is a bad thing is becauseif the person who is reading the piece of writing or article disagrees with the author opinion they are going no enjoy the article and thereforenot read it and because of this they are more likely to not buy that newspaper or magazine anymoreas they know they have different opinions to them and will go look for other newspaper that agree with their opinion. The hypodermic needle theory is an example of why bias is a bad thing. People in the media especially young people areinfluenced from whatthey see. The theory talks about how people see things in the media such as stories and news and believe it straight away without having a say or their own opinion. This is dangerous as if an article talks about their opinion the people are young aregoing to believe this opinion without looking at other or their own. The PayneFund Studies, which were conducted between 1929-1932and looked at the effect movies haveon children, also contributed to this idea that the mass media has a powerfuland direct influence on audiences. http://lessonbucket.com/media-in-minutes/the- hypodermic-needle-theory/ So by having these strong opinions out there for people who are not as educated as much as other can help influence the young generation into believing things that they might not agree with if they learn more about it. Therefore, shows that magazines and papers should be neutral In their opinion to give these people an option to decide which sidetheir own by looking at the two different sides and deciding which one they agree with. In conclusion, I believe that Bias should not be allowed in factual writing. This is becausethe media has too much influence on their audience and therefore have too much power to change the mind of lots of people. I think people should be able to speak their mind and havetheir opinions but have to talk about the opposite opinion also so it gives the audience two different sides to read from. I believe this is fair as the newspaper still are able to talk about what they wantbut it allows people to have more information on the topic. This is also a good thing for the papers as people will still buy their product because there isn’t justone opinion. A bias opinion doesn’tmean that there right but it also doesn’t mean they wrong as there is no right answer butif there is a serious issuesuch as the Gun control in America I think people shouldn’tbe able to talk about justone opinion and this is a big issueand
- 4. should have facts and information to educate the reader on the importance of both sides. If America justposted papers talking how guns are a good thing this will encourage people to think like this when they should be able to have their own opinion on something that’s going to affect them. So I believe bias should not be included in factual writing.