SWA #4

Short Writing Assignment #4
For this assignment I looked to the online news offered by the Washington Post news website, specifically given by the link at the bottom. For my blog I chose Think Progress.
There did seem to be a definite difference in the types of stories that each of these organizations covered. The blog logs at Think Progress are almost always related to the latest political drama, and they mostly pertain to the political stage in America. Stories on this blog pertaining to wider international news ‘stretched’ as far as the war in Iraq, and to an issue with Romania withdrawing troops from Iraq, and even these were perhaps slanted so as to criticize the Bush Whitehouse’s handling of the situation. So, in total, the blog seems to be a laundry list of everything bad that republicans have done recently. Stories on the Washington Post website seemed to cover broader news, concentrating not only on the latest republican scandals, but issues such as the political situation with North Korea. In conclusion, the Think Progress blog had a much narrower scope, designed to decry the GOP, while Washington Post had other news to tell as well.
The Washington Post seems to be more of the ‘simply informative’ variety, simply stating, for example, how many casualties there were on any given day, without referencing the fact that the president started the war without international support, as Think Progress may be prone to do. Clearly the blog is disinterested with most foreign affairs, and very interested in bashing any republican they can get their sights on, while the Washington post seems to be more objective. Also, Think Progress makes their liberalism blatant by posting many articles under headings such as “Incompetent Establishment” or “Corrupt Establishment.” The articles featured therein are usually critical in nature to GOP members. So, the main difference between the two sources includes the evident lack of objectivity, as deduced by word choice and tone of articles. And also the blatant criticism that the bloggers post is very different from what one may find at the Washington Post website. However, one may say that the Washington Post is simply not critical enough of the current administration. It must be considered, however, that the authors of blogs have considerably more freedom to write about what seems to be on the minds of Americans with similar viewpoints. Nationally syndicated news organizations have many different aspects of news to cover. This may invariably lead to less bias, as this case would seem to reflect, or it may lead to a filching out of many opinions that should be considered.
So, in conclusion I would say that the blog news source, while concurring with my own opinions could lead to a more radically leftist viewpoint. It is never good to only listen to agreeing viewpoints. The Washington Post at least accomplishes this with greater success.
Washington Post website:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/NewsSearch?st=april+20&fn=&sfn=&sa=np&cp=22&hl=false&sb=-1&sd=&ed=&blt=
Blog site:
http://thinkprogress.org/page/5/