[Global Warming] Newspaper #1

"As Arctic Sea Ice Melts, Experts Expect New Low"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/science/earth/28seaice.html?ref=science
This article appeared in print on August 28, 2008, on page A20 of the New York edition of The New York Times.



Newspaper, as the most impartial means of mass communication, does not allow a bias -or is not supposed to contain any bias. Yet it requires a long self-contemplation for a writer to set aside his/her bias when writing. For the readers, it's even worse, because they need to do one more job: not only trying to set aside their own bias while reading, but also straining to detect the writer's hidden bias in the article. Anyway, most writers prefer to write an article filled with quotes from other people, because the writers believe their articles would be objective enough if they included others' opinions in the articles (which is not always true, though).

This article, too, is quite neutral since the writer doesn't directly intervene in the issue but rather "reports" what scientists claim about the melting Arctic ice. Since the "Global Warming" itself is an issue that is limited to have any bias anyway (since everybody knows that the global warming is a bad thing), the only possible bias this article has is the bias of the writer in choosing the evidences- the quotes. In this article, the writer again and again quotes quite a few scientists and experts. These quotes surely help the article to earn more credibility, reliablity and professionality. However, based on what standard the writer has chosen those particular scientists in the article, we the readers don't know.

Yet the overall meaning of the article is very clear. It is world-widely acknowledged that Arctic ice is melting more and more due to the global warming. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to add some more evidences to this globally critical issue. Since most people do not realize the seriousness of the global warming, the article maybe is written to inform the negligent readers what's happening to the polar bears and melting ices in the Arctic at this moment.

This article made me re-realize about how serious the global warming issue is becoming. As I mentioned above, the article's usage of the quotes from a number of experts were efficient. I found the article very convincing because of the quotes; those quotes gave the article authority -the power.