Power and privilege
1. How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?
The topic of immigrants within the United States is a controversial subject which is seen through a variety of perspectives. Such greatly depends on an individual’s relation to the topic and the extent to which their ideology agrees with it. There as, the opinion column titled “No Money. No English. But America Welcomed a Young Foreigner”speaks upon the immigration journey of his father, who immigrated to the United States in 1952. The author’s view on immigration is subjective as having close relations to the subject, therefore giving their opinion and addressing the topic through diction indicating bias towards accepting foreigners. However through the text, the author comments on the complexity of the subject, which creates an uneasy and even contradicting atmosphere at times. The author understands the hardships and intentions of immigrants, which favors the specific social group throughout the text. Therefore, bias through source control and tone is evident as the author criticizes the current United States approach with profiling immigrants and their handling. The relation and further connection an author has on a subject is a determining factor on how mentioned social groups are to be presented throughout a text.
2. Which social groups are marginalized, excluded or silenced within the text?
The role of a journalist is to provide a source of news, which is often tailored to the audience that consumes it. Altogether, journalists should have the moral obligation to cover current happenings in a minimally biased manner, in order to spread news of validity. However, such is hardly the case, primarily due to the ideologies which author’s carry. Such can be exampled from the news article titled “American missionary wrote 'God, I don't want to die' before being killed by remote tribe”,published by FoxNews. Given the strongly conservative biased nature of the source, FoxNews, there is preliminary bias altogether. However, the text centralizes around a missionary man’s death incident, which was a result of a remote tribe’s action. The remote tribe and their indigenous culture are silenced throughout the text, by highlighting the life of the man serving his missionary trip. Therefore, the text favors the subject of the text, an American Citizen, which altogether limits the whole truth of the incident. Through included bias, consumers often receive a partial truth on topics, which further drives communal bias and disenables a holistic perspective on current events.
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