Ashley Singh
Bias in Media

The world is changing around us. Our home, Earth, is unquestionably under an existing pressure put on by advancing humans. A major issue that we face every day, regardless of what jobs or activities one may pursue, is global warming and climate change. However, to what degree will biased arguments promote putting in new polices and effects and to what degree will they want to promote these polices? Sadly, politics encompass bias, when one has a strong inclination towards a perceived opinion without assessing all the facts, when in reality, politics and government should be a factual based organism.

Trying to get two opposing articles, right-wing based and left-wing based, would be effective in comparing the bias and goals of each article. Each article had facts, that promotes their side of the argument. It was astounding to see how they analyzed their facts and presented them to their readers. The titles also have a subtle weight on an article. This apparent from news sources of The Christian Science Monitor and Buzzfeed, with “Antarctica is Actually Gaining Ice, says Nasa. Is Global Warming Over?” and “This Map Shows How Badly Climate Change Will Impact Each County in the US” respectively. Just by glancing at the titles the reader is provided with a broad overview of the article. With The Christian Science Monitor, the article questions if global warming can be over, reducing the urgency of global warming drastically. However, on the other hand, Buzzfeed’s article uses global warming as a platform where each county in the Us can be effected, implying that everyone in the US will be influenced some way or another by global warming.

Delving into the articles, it became more apparent that The Christian Science Monitor, the right winged article avoided talking directly about global warming, and answered their heading question in about one sentence, unfortunately. Buzzfeed, the left winged article, continued to shower their readers with an assortment of cause- effect relationships, for instance, “changing climate would impact six areas of the US economy — agriculture, crime, coastal properties, electricity demand, human mortality, and labor supply — on a county-by-county level,” and then settled for a claim that did not mean affecting all counties, but rather poorer counties in the south.

Overall, each article had bias towards their respective polices, conservative and liberal, to promote their views. The weaving of their views: conservatives weak on regulation, and liberals strong regulation and reinforcement (Del Mastro), may become an anomaly to unaware readers, and shouldn’t be occurrence that one may have to face while browsing the media.

 

Citations:

Del Mastro, A. (2017, January 30). Too Good a Problem. The American Conservative . Retrieved September 7, 2017, from http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/too-good-a-problem/

Hirji, Z. (2017, June 29). This Map Shows How Badly Climate Change Will Impact Each County In The US. Buzzfeed. Retrieved September 07, 2017, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/zahrahirji/climate-change-hurts-local-economies-in-us-study-shows?utm_term=.rsN9pkBzz#.ijeQGdlNN

Shehktman, L. (2015, November 01). Antarctica is actually gaining ice, says NASA. Is global warming over? The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved September 07, 2017, from https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1101/Antarctica-is-actually-gaining-ice-says-NASA.-Is-global-warming-over