Biased About Being Biased, Terra Poole

Objectivity in reporting

People often make the assumption that journalists remain completely objective in their reporting. However, there is no way a journalist can remain absolutely objective for each journalist is her/his own person and would tell each story differently from the next journalist. The journalist's selection of facts, quotes and wording all suggest there are different ways to tell a story. Each journalist has biases too, it goes along with being a human being. However, this is not a negative thing. Biases are a good thing because they make a person more passionate about what she/he is reporting on. However, biases exist in many different industries.

Bias in politics

There are even biases in politics. For example, President Barrack Obama and the health care system in the United States. He is specifically trying to make change in that area of politics because he thinks it is important. Is this a bad thing? Being biased towards a certain topic is not necessarily a negative thing because it helps promote change. Perhaps having a government that is not passionate or biased towards any topics could result in little movement and/or change.

Bias in film

An extremely biased filmmaker is Michael Moore, who directed documentaries such as Sicko (2007), Fahrenheit 911 (2004) and Bowling for Columbine (2002). He has received a lot of criticism for his one-sided approach to telling the truth. People argue that he often exaggerates the truth, misleads people with cinematography, and omits certain facts to defend his points better. However, people should be criticized for merely taking everything they hear or read at face value. Moore is offering one perspective, though it may be biased, people have the right and freedom to research the opposing side and find out how much truth is hitting the light. Moore cares a lot about certain issues about the United States and he's making an attempt to draw some light to those subjects.

Bias in blogs

Is it a bad thing to have opinions and to have those opinions shine through in writing? Even Kevin's blog post about Fox News has bias throughout it, which should be considered a positive thing. Kevin clearly has a distaste for Fox News and it shines through in his writing. Perhaps his blog post would not have been as compelling and engaging if he didn't use lines like, "and it sickens me to see how many ratings they get." However, people should be proactive enough to consider that perhaps Kevin could be biased against Fox News and research for themselves the other side to Kevin's argument. Perhaps even this blog post is biased towards being biased.

Note: Image from Jrenseyblog