Is the News Unbiased or Indifferent?

Last year I took a Business Writing class at 8 a.m. during my last quarter as a college senior. Although my fellow students and I were struggling to stay conscious during the class, our teacher's focus seemed to be more on politics and world issues than business writing. He wanted us to see the way words can express thoughts, but also how words can be manipulated to underplay or subvert thought. He was a big fan of George Orwell. Here's something from one of my first writing assignments in the class:

Jessica Power

April 1, 2010

English 183

In his essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell discusses the “general collapse” of the English language and how it is being manipulated by government to cover-up and even defend acts that would normally be seen as appalling. Orwell argues that because language is being altered to make things appear differently than they are, our general perception is being thrown off with it. We are unable to see and understand clearly because the speeches and writing being used are euphemistic and vague. For instance George Orwell states that when “Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer population or rectification of frontiers.” The English


We also were introduced to a website called Common Dreams.org with this article called The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/01-8 


It basically states how blinded we've become by facts that are spewed out of the news and how we Miss the Take Away. The main point of speaking is to convey a message and when you're given facts and statistics it can sometimes distract you from the point that's trying to be made- if there even is one to begin with.


What's the point in knowing a boy died last week? This is why I'm writing this. I was thinking about it and how horrific this boys death was and must have been to experience, but i was having trouble connecting to it. Instead of explaining to me and everyone what happened, like you would explain a tragedy to a friend, they just gave facts.


Facts:


An 8 year old boy named Leiby Kletzky was kidnapped and murdered by a man named  Levi Aron in New York on July 11th.


The boy's cause of death was was from being given drugs, smothered, and then suffocated.


About 33 hours later, police found Leiby's severed foot in the refrigerator of of Aron's freezer.


The rest of his body was found in some trash bags in a dumpster.


Aron said he suffered from hearing voices and seeing hallucinations.


Facts are clean -neat and tidy. They are unbiased and strait forward. How sad. Here's how I would have reported this news, which by now is now being washed away by the tide of other incoming facts and datafrom other news:


There was this boy named Leiby Kletzky. He lived in this small, protected neighborhood. He was on his way home and his momwas waiting to pick him up when this guy Levi Aron came along. I don't know whether Leiby knew Aron or not, but he was seen getting into his car and Aron drove off.


The next day the police went searching for Leiby, and I don't know how they found out Aron ws connected to what happened -probably surveilance cameras- but they went into Aron's house to search for the boy. They found a bloody cutting board in the kitchen next to some chopping knives. They opened up the fridge and found a severed foot wrapped in plastic. Aron told the police the rest of Leiby's body was in a dumpster nearby. I was like, holy crap, when I heard this. I was so worried that the boy had been mutilated while he was alive. But the autopsy showed hat Leiby had been given drugs and was suffocated -and that's how he died. So he wasn't butchered alive. Aron heard that people were looking for the boy and his way of "hiding the evidence" was to chop the remains up and hide them.


Aron also says he suffers from hearing voices and hallucinations. I was like great. Why wasn't someone keeping a closer watch on him. That should have been a red flag right there. I don't know how therapists live like this? Did Aron even have one? It's just got to suck to suspect someone might be capable of doing something like this because of what they tell you in a session, but not being able to do anything until you have "real reason" to believe that individual might do something.


 I feel bad for his family. It's one thing to have a kid go missing, but the second you hear that your little boy's foot was found in somebody's fridge. F*d up. We should be paying closer attention to prevening things like this from happening. People can say, yah but it doesn't happen that often... The fact that it happens period is bad enough. Just look at the Casey Anthony thing. Why are people killing kids? How can you do that? F*d up. I can't imagine what I would do if that happened to someone in my family. I know what my mom would do. If it was my sister or I who had been killed, Aron would be one dead man. People would have to go looking for his severed foot in my mom's fridge. We feel defense and protective after the factsomething like this happens- maybe we should be applying that protection to preventing it from happening again. It just seems so hopeless that something like this can happen, but we have no way to stop it from happening again.