After reading the article, I am undecided on which writer to side with. On one hand, I believe that journalists should attempt to keep their writing impartial. As Bill Keller says, in news articles reporters suspend their opinions and let the evidence speak for itself. I agree with him, but is this a realistic point of view? One way or another, bias will be exposed in news writing, because journalists are actually living, breathing creatures with emotions and opinions. It is natural to want to inform the public about your individual ideas, but as a journalist, your goal is to do the complete opposite. Glenn Greenwald says that humans all process the world through subjective prisms, but we don't all look through the same subjective prisms. We (as people, as public, as readers) want the facts (or 'facts') so we can process it through our individual 'subjective prisms.' On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to have opinion-free news. Even when a newspaper chooses what to report on, they are illustrating their bias. Word choice is subjective, and sources are subjective. The best we can do, as journalists, is to try our best to keep opinion out of our articles.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2154991,00.html In this article, Kathleen Parker describes different kinds of self-tracking technologies. How much technology is too much technology? If we hold machines responsible for keeping track of our day-to-day actions, are we lazy and/or irresponsible?
I didn't think this review was as effective as it could've been. Lorde's music video for Royals plays over his voice, so that the viewer focuses only on the video and song, but not on his opinion. I think this could be distracting for many people, as it was for me. Maybe the Tam News can do video reviews posted online, but they shouldn't be in this format.
I agree that we, as students, are put under a lot of stress as a result of increased homework loads. It was interesting to read the daily accounts, because it helps the reader to better understand the sheer amount of homework his daughter has, but the detailed accounts of each homework assignment were boring to read. I think how the author wrote the article distracted from the point he was trying to make, which was that schools are giving too much homework. I definitely with Meg about adding statistics to the article to give the reader context.
On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to have opinion-free news. Even when a newspaper chooses what to report on, they are illustrating their bias. Word choice is subjective, and sources are subjective. The best we can do, as journalists, is to try our best to keep opinion out of our articles.