Letter to the Editor: An Unreliable Source After having researched through several different letters to editor’s I found a topic that I found interesting since I am just now starting college classes this year. The letter to the editor I discovered is titled “Universities Teaching Racism.” It was written by a Jacqueline A. Postal. She goes on to try to prove her claim by using bias and a few unexplained quotes. Postal uses pathos heavily in her text to incite her audience’s emotions. However, even though the text seems to rely on pathos there are trace amounts of ethos and logos in her writing that should be discussed to explain why the writing would not prove to be an effective argument. Postal starts her writing with pathos in a statement with loaded words to spark a reaction in her audience. The exact text used is: …show more content…
However, while stating sources does give her a certain degree of logos the way she did not support them with more information shows the lack of ethos in the text. One example of this is in her second paragraph when she tried to use twitter to justify her claim of racism. Even though it was a direct statement from the man she was considering a racist, the way she supports the statement is weak. “Last week on Twitter George Ciccariello-Maher, associate professor of political science at Drexel, called for white genocide. He tweeted that “when the whites were massacred during the Haitian Revolution, that was a good thing indeed.” (Postal). Yes, the source does show that there was a racist undertone in his tweet, the way she goes on to justify this as information however, destroys her argument on this specific event. The reason that her argument becomes invaluable as a reliable source is because of her wording and unprofessional use of the information she had. Postal goes on to