Even Professional Political Journalists Forget What's Important

The first of the two articles that I read discussed how John Yoo recently published a memorandum stating that, in a nutshell, harsh interrogations are acceptable. The writer from the New York Times highlights that Yoo’s memorandum gave very broad latitude as to harsh interrogations may be used. Other highlights include the reactions of legal scholars who were very surprised at the range that Yoo’s document. These scholars went on saying that while there were few limitations, those select limitations will most likely not be in effect overseas. The articles goes further to sum up that Yoo’s memorandum supported and defended harsh interrogations, by defining torture, and focusing on the CIA’s techniques.

Overall this article’s main point consists of telling about the memorandum being released and the reactions of selected people. The article also presents a bias. The author gives the impression that his is not in support of Yoo’s memorandum. Reading the document, I could tell this author thinks harsh interrogations are morally wrong, just by the tone of the article. As I stated in the summary of the article, the author uses quotes from legal scholars, who each had a negative spin on the memorandum. The author even talks about how President Bush could/would authorize harsh interrogations like waterboarding in emergencies. In discussing the negative views of others, the author implies that he feels the same way.

The second piece I chose was from a blog. The author was a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, and is a bestselling author of two novels. He jumps into his blog by showing some highlights of the past two weeks in politics and events involving the war. He talks about how a Department of Justice released the harsh interrogations memo written by John Yoo, and how Obama went bowling and had a low score. He then goes on to a table of how often certain phrases have been used in the news: Yoo and torture – 102 times, Obama and bowling – 1,043. He goes on further saying that the news and accomplished political journalists are focusing on trivial events because that’s what “the regular folk” want to hear about. He quotes his own book “Great American Hypocrites” conferring that because political journalists incessantly gossip, it then becomes an important story, and because they think it’s important, then the rest of the public must think its important.

Blogs are nice and almost refreshing, because they are personally biased. This man Glenn Greenwald, is incredibly pissed that our nation and our political writers are forgetting about huge events to highlight trivial things. He even bashes our current president and is not afraid to really tell it like it is.

These articles definitely contrast in the way they show their bias. It is very apparent when you read something with great bias, and one without. The blog is very personal, and discussed how one individual feels about the situation, while a news paper article brings everything to the table, and shows a bias very subtly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/washington/02terror.html?ei=5090&en=c4ef401cd0be0b11&ex=1364788800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/05/media/index.html