Informational Bias in News articles

Link to the Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/arab-league-discusses-observers-mission-in-syria/2012/01/08/gIQAtOTHjP_story.html

1) Did your article follow the prescribed list of types of informational bias?

In a way the article that I chose did follow the informational bias. Examples of this are shown as they used a bit of each point. For example the writer did use personalization when he mentioned the Bashar Al-Assad regime and the Qatari prime minister speaking on behalf of the Arab league. She also used dramatization slightly when she mentioned the number of victims and the bloodshed that is occurring even with the monitors in the country. The writer doesn’t intentionally focus on the monitors in Syria themselves but rather the events leading up to or surrounding the situation making the article not use fragmentation completely. Authority order is used throughout the article when the other finds a particular group to be blamed for whether it was countries that opposed the US’s attempt for resolving the issue or the Assad’s regime in general.

2) How did ‘informational bias’ affect the way you perceived the news story?

I don’t think that the informational bias have an overwhelming affect on how I perceived the article. In general if I was to say my opinion on this article without knowing those points I would say that since it is an American based newspaper it will in one way or another stand with the Syrian people and try to make the Assad regime look bad. It will also try to make some countries in the UN look bad, especially those that oppose the American resolutions that were proposed in the Security Council. I wouldn’t say that the author really tried to pin it on a specific person or just really focus on one part of the story and forget the other or make everything look extremely shocking and dramatic, but I do believe there was some authority disorder here and there. So in reality this article is quite neutral up to a point. Since the article is assessing the Arab league monitors in Syria despite the criticism it does have to take all the events of the revolution into consideration, as well as say the people’s views and the politicians who are involved, also who is seen as the good side and the bad side and all of these other things that in a way correspond to the informational bias but not in a very obvious way. Another thing I noticed about the article is the slight focus on military intervention which is slightly peculiar since that didn’t really show up in the title, subtitle or the introduction. I assume that the writer was trying to hinder that this is what the US thinks therefore the editor thinks it should be mentioned somewhere and it was in some parts of the article.

3) How do these parameters affect which stories make it in to print and which don’t?

All stories go through a process of filtering. What is filtered out or kept in the story depends on the principles of the newspaper itself and what its aim or view is on world issues in general. The newspaper could be very liberal and free to speak whatever it pleases yet offends people in a certain way. At the same time the newspaper could be heavily controlled by the government or a political power yet wants freedom and a moderate point of view to be shown to the audience. So this all comes back to where the newspaper is based at and what it believes in and it all comes down to what the editor thinks is a story that can be published or not.