Thesis Statements: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly



Thesis Statements: The Good, the Bad, and the UglyAnalyze, evaluate, and rank the following (from best to worst). Be prepared to defend your placings!CNS ran 6 conservative articles written by staff writers. Fox News ran 4 conservative articles, one staff-written, and one AP article. The Washington Post ran one unbiased AP article. The Guardian ran one liberal article, as did Deutsche Welle, both written by staff writers.The coverage of the incident was pretty much what one might expect. The conservative news sources covered it in a conservative way. The liberal papers covered it with a liberal slant.When Bush canceled his trip to Switzerland, the media reported the incident with varying degrees of interest and from a variety of perspectives. More conservative American news sources such as Fox and CNS provided the most coverage, and while their reporting was initially only slightly biased, it became more and more conservative in the following week. Other American news outlets, even the more liberal leaning ones, tended to be supportive of Bush and dismissive of the Swiss movement to have him arrested. Only the international papers, The Guardian and Deutsche Welle recognized the legitimacy of the Swiss claims, and portrayed the cancellation as a decision made out of fear of prosecution. The coverage of former president George W. Bush’s canceled trip to Switzerland was sparse. The conservative news sources had the most to say on the subject, while the more liberal news outlets only ran one article each. This is not that surprising, however, since there were more important things going on at the time, like the uprising in Egypt.The news reports concerning George W. Bush’s trip to Switzerland clearly indicate the fact that American news sources, even those considered more liberal, rallied around the former republican president, and were critical of the presumptuous Swiss attempt to arrest him. Predictably, the British and German newspapers, which are prejudiced against the United States in the first place, tried to paint Bush as a guilty war criminal who was running S wrote one unbiased article, but then wrote a series of articles that were more conservative in their slant, and used the logical fallacies of slippery slope and reductio ad absurdum, which weakened their points considerably. Fox News reporting followed the same pattern, publishing one good Associated Press article, and then three more problematic ones that were clearly slanted and appealed quite brazenly to pathos in a way that was meant to manipulate the audience into supporting Bush based on patriotic rather than legal grounds. The Washington Post was less biased, but still seemed to go out of its way to support Bush and make the Swiss look foolish, which oddly goes against their usual liberal bias. CNN also did pretty much the same thing, since it ran a similar AP article, although it attempted, through its ambiguous picture, to maintain its liberal slant to some degree. The Guardian was more critical of Bush and more supportive of the Swiss in its writing than the American news sources, but the picture, headline, and caption of its article make it obvious that this paper is vehemently anti-Bush, as it sets the former president up as a Hitler-like figure. Deutsche Welle, too, attempts to vilify Bush, not only in its picture, which makes Bush look as if he is hiding behind the American flag, and the headline, which mentions the buzzword “torture,” but also in its uncomplimentary portrayal of Bush in the article itself.The articles that reported the cancelation of former president George W. Bush’s trip to Switzerland were largely the same, covering the same basic points, and usually including all or parts of the same quotations. However, when more closely analyzed, certain instances of bias were apparent in all articles. This was most subtle in the American coverage directly after the cancellation was announced. The conservative bias that permeated the American coverage became more apparent in the days that followed. The international sources were somewhat more shameless in their liberal-slanted reporting. News coverage of former president George W. Bush’s aborted trip to Switzerland was uneven, with the American news outlets giving it far more attention than their international counterparts. American coverage also tended to be more supportive of Bush than the international articles, and while one might have expected the more liberal news sources to take the opportunity to criticize Bush, in fact the more conservative news outlets were the ones that returned to the issue again and again, while the liberal sources tended to run only one, fairly objective article on the story.Some Organization Options: What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?I. Intro w/thesisII. Articles appealing to pathos CNS articles 2-6Fox articles 2-4Deutsche Welle article 1III. Articles using slippery slope/ reductio ad absurdumCNSFoxIV. Articles using slanting CNSFoxThe Washington Post CNNThe GuardianDeutsche WelleV. Overall patternsAmericanliberalconservativeInternational VI. ConclusionI. Intro w/thesisII. American initial coverage (midline-conservative)CNS & Fox article oneThe Washington Post & CNNIII. International initial coverage (rather liberal/anti-Bush)The GuardianDeutsche WelleIV. Continuing American coverage (more and more conservative)CNS later articlesFox later articlesV. ConclusionI. Intro w/thesisII. American conservative sourcesCNSi. article oneii. article twoiii. article threeiv. article fourv. article fivevi. article sixFOXi. article oneii. article twoiii. article threeiv. article fourIII. American liberal sourcesThe Washington PostCNNIV. International sourcesAl JazeeraThe GuardianDeutsche WelleV. ConclusionAnalysis: How would you rank the following sections of analysis in terms of effectiveness and accuracy? Identify the problems in all three and how you might go about correcting them.The first CNS article ends by mentioning three relevant legal cases, that of Pinochet, Livni, and the Pope. In doing so, CNS stays fairly objective, not using any loaded words or slanting as it presents useful background information. Overall, this article stays dead center in terms of bias. It is merely reporting the incident and the perspectives of the various parties involved. CNS itself does not ever take a side. It remains true to its mission to offer “balanced” reporting on issues that frequently get reported in an unfair manner by the liberal press.As one can clearly see from the ending of this article, Patrick Goodenough, and CNS itself, are hopelessly biased on this issue. Goodenough is out of line when he compares the pending arrest of Bush to the attempts to extract the Pope from the Vatican and have him brought up on sexual abuse charges. No one has any proof that the Pope himself has engaged in sexual abuse, and furthermore, nothing short of an army could drag the Pope out of the Vatican and into a Swiss court. The prosecution of Bush is far more realistic and imminent. Goodenough downplays the serious nature of the case in order to make it seem like what Bush did was acceptable and within the limits of the Geneva Convention. Of course, one would expect such a position from a news source that contains the word “conservative” in its name, or at least in the previous incarnation of its name, before it tried to hide its bias by dubbing itself the “cyber news source.” The information CNS puts out is not to be trusted, as it is clearly compromised by the prejudice of its writers and staff.At the end of his article, Patrick Goodenough mentions not only the precedent-setting arrest of Pinochet, but also the “extraterritorial” efforts to arrest the Pope for covering up sexual abuse in the Catholic church. It might seem logical enough to bring up Pinochet in this context, as he was actually convicted of the type of crime of which Bush is being accused. However, the mention of the “extraterritorial” legal action against the Pope is not terribly relevant, and serves only to discredit the Swiss protestors in the eyes of the reader. Had Goodenough mentioned the case against the Pope first, it would likely have seemed a ludicrous comparison, but Goodenough is a seasoned reporter, and arranges his information cleverly, so that the reader can test the writing in the first part of his article and find it trustworthy and unbiased. Then at the end he eases into the rather unfair comparison with the Pope only after making the more legitimate comparisons with Pinochet and Livni, as if the three were all parallel instances. It is likely that a reader, having come to trust Goodenough, may well overlook the leap in logic, and come to agree with him that those attempting to arrest Bush are radicals who are overstepping their legal bounds. It is important to note that Goodenough slyly fails to include any observations from legal experts on whether or not the Swiss suit has merit. He avoids the arguments mentioned in several other articles that affirm the Swiss do indeed have enough evidence to pursue a case against Bush.Thesis Statement Ranking: with some room for argument 3 (if you take out the personal opinion at the end)8 (if you add in something about the trend of conservative sources reporting in a more conservatively biased way over time)7 (if you take out the personal opinion at the end)[the rest are all really BAD—for varying reasons]6 (too long, no coherent thesis. This is like bits and pieces of body paragraphs. The thesis should present the arguable patterns or trends you have observed—NOT EVIDENCE or every tiny observation you made.)5 (too biased! Don’t let your personal feelings make their way into the paper!)4 (last sentence unnecessary, and opening doesn’t have enough comparison/judgment analysis)1 (terrible! Just a list with no arguable judgment or real analytical comparison)2 (terrible! If your analysis can’t go beyond this, you are lost!)Org: II probably best, but III is possible (if it works with your information), and others are certainly possible as well.The first option is likely going to be catastrophic. Look for patterns—don’t just analyze each source individually. No matter HOW good your analysis is, that doesn’t make a good Media Bias paper. Triage! What supports your thesis? You don’t want the equivalent of 10 language analysis essays jammed together. You want a cohesive analysis of media bias. Analysis Ranking—but all have problems3 21Reqs: At least 10 sources CITED in the paper (paraphrased or directly quoted)At least 4 major news sources discussed ................
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