The Sarah Palin Controversy

This year's political race seems to have dematerialized into a showdown of minorities. It is apparent that no matter the outcome, the 2009 election will surely be one to remembered. On the Democratic ticket, we have a black man. On the Republican ticket, we have a woman. After seeing him in the limelight for quite a while now, I am very well acquainted with the past and platforms of Barack Obama. But who is Sarah Palin? Where does she come from? What is her stance? I decided to use this assignment to find out.

The first article I came across was from slate.com (http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2199058). From the very beginning, this piece nearly shouted the author's opposition to Palin. As the piece went on, the author began to express negative feelings towards John McCain, insisting that his pick was simply "reckless [and] impulsive."

While the author is an excellent writer and though I feel that this piece was wonderfully written, I do not think that this piece is an example of a quality journalism piece. Rather than presenting the facts, the author instead twisted the facts and presented them in a way that supported his case and viewpoint. While this technique is helpful to debaters and lawyers, it is not the technique that should be used to present facts in a journalism article. Opinions are permissible, but they should be established separately from the facts. This way, a reader can read information and make his/her own judgement instead of being pressured to take a certain side. This is why I believe that the second article I read is a much better example of a quality journalism piece.

The second piece I read came from The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us/politics/02palin.html). The piece, like a thesis paper, starts off with the a small introduction and the author's "thesis" or opinion. As the article unfolds, the feel of it shifts from an opinion piece to an informational piece. All of the same facts that were given in the first article are given here, except there are no opinions attached to them. When presented without bias, these facts give an entirely different impression. In the first article, the facts were presented to make Palin look stupid, indecisive, and fickle. In the second article, these same facts were simply used to provide some background information on Palin -- her pregnancy (her fifth child, Trig, who suffers from Down Syndrome), her daughter Bristol's pregnancy (her daughter is an unmarried teenager; she is in her fifth month of pregnancy), her rumored power abuse (forcing an employee to resign), and her choice in the mayoral election (though her stepmother-in-law ran for the position, she sided with another woman). This piece allowed me to make my own judgments on Sarah Palin, while the other piece told me to dislike her.

By the end of a quality thesis paper, you will leave agreeing with the author's opinion. This is how I felt after reading the first article. However, the article was supposed to be an example of journalism, not a thesis paper. By the end of a quality jounalism piece, you should walk away with an opinion, but it should be one that you formed yourself after reading the facts and opinions presented for you. This is how I felt after reading the second article, leading me to conclude that the second piece was a better example of quality journalism than the first.