Nathan Percy's Use Of Bias In Journalism

All respected news outlets have one thing in common: they strive to keep their coverage honest and impartial. Nathan Percy is a reporter at the Orange County Register who is responsible for reporting news for cities in South Orange County. He also writes feature stories and covers community sports. As a reporter, his stories are required to be written accurately and fairly, without bias. He does this in a variety of ways. According to Media Helping Media, fair reporting means “exploring all sides of an issue and reporting the findings accurately.” They go on to explain that journalists should not have any other motivation besides presenting “sourced and verified facts,” because if an article is written with a desired outcome, it becomes a

If a journalist leaves out important details in a story to put a certain “spin” on it, that journalist is inserting his or her own biases. Bias occurs when a journalist includes his or her own prejudices in their story. Bias in journalism can occur unintentionally, too. For example, synonyms are used when paraphrasing information. However, not all synonyms have the same connotation as the original word. If a journalist were to paraphrase the quote, “The ship James bought was inexpensive” by saying, “James bought a cheap boat,” they could be inadvertently sending across a more negative-sounding

Trying to frantically write down what a source is saying during an interview leaves room for error, and it can sometimes be hard to hear through static and background noise on a recording. By asking questions via email, the interviewee has lower chances of misunderstanding the question asked (if the question is spoken, they could accidentally mishear it), and the interviewer can get a direct answer that’s already formatted for print. When speaking, people can sometimes use run on sentences, which makes it difficult for a quote to be used in printed articles. Getting an answer in writing also gives the interviewee more time to respond, which gives them a chance to give a more precise and well thought-out