Rhetorical Analysis - 12/4/2007

I recently looked at an article published by UCLA's Political Science department regarding political bias in major media outlets. The article can be found

here

.

The point (or argument) being made in this article is, of course, that bias in media does in fact exist - more specifically, that a left-leaning or politically-liberal bias exists as an average across the nation's media outlets, and that even many of the outlets which are touted as leaning 'right' or conservative are in fact, left-leaning.

The audience for this article is fairly broad - anyone who cares about the possibility or apparent existence of bias in political and news coverage and reporting is the obvious general audience. Political scientists, news agencies themselves, concerned students, political activists, consipiracy theorists, statisticians, you name it. In fact, it may be better to talk about who is not the audience, because they may be in the minority. Generally speaking, conservative audiences are more concerned with a liberal news bias because it does not reflect many of their values or beliefs, so this may be another qualification of the intended audience: conservative viewers/listeners/readers.

The method used here in arguing the case is a strong one - a seemingly unbiased and objective data-gathering and data-analyzing mult-year empirically-based study reveals a linear graded measurement of any major media outlet's political leanings (or lack thereof...). The argument was convincing and enlightening in many respects because it presented raw and organized data in a convincing manner, with clear indications that the argument was not only valid but practically factual.

I was especially surprised to see that The Wall Street Journal, which I always understood to be a fairly unbiased, if not conservatively-geared, daily publication did in fact have liberal leanings. It seems that, according to the methodology of the study and the published results, an outlet's op/ed (opinions/editorials) sections or segments may lean one way (as should be expected from such a section - it's supposed to be opinionated and argumentative!) while the actual news reporting sections or segments might lean the other way! This was the case with The Wall Street Journal - although their op/eds were conservative in nature, their news reporting was fairly liberal (again, according to the scoring rubric of the study).

This was an effective argument to target anyone concerned with the topic - it confirmed many of the beliefs of concerned conservatives, and objectively and empirically showed persuasive results.