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Directions
-Read the excerpt below from "Best of the Web" found at OpinionJournal.com on December 9th.
-Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.
Yesterday we noted that a Reuters dispatch, titled “Iran’s President Questions Holocaust,” included this sentence: “Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.” A later version of the dispatch, however, deleted the words “Historians say” and presented the Holocaust as fact: “The Nazis killed some 6 million Jews during their 1933-1945 rule.”
But today, Reuters has a new formulation:
Historians say six million Jews were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. Regarding this widely-accepted view, Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA . . .
Reuters, of course, famously forbade its “reporters” from referring to the Sept. 11 attacks as an act of terrorism. “We’re trying to treat everyone on a level playing field,” said Stephen Jukes, the “global news editor,” in September 2001. Apparently Reuters thinks Holocaust deniers are entitled to a “level playing field,” even if that means downgrading a historical fact to a “widely accepted view.”.
(For Opinion Journal’s website, click here.)
To accurately identify different types of bias, you should be aware of the issues of the day, and the liberal and conservative perspectives on each issue.
Types of Media Bias:Questions
What does the excerpt below tell you about the reliability of reports from the news agency Reuters?
Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers.
Answers
This is an opinion question. A possible answer is: Under the premise of treating everyone on a level playing field, Reuters gives legitimacy to factually incorrect beliefs and statements.
