Weekly Blog 5: Article Review

While I was scrolling through news articles today, one article caught my eye, not for its title, but for its description beneath. You can click on the image to upscale it if it appears too small on your screen:

FOX News posted an article titled "Deserter Bergdahl says Taliban more 'honest than US Army," and the description reads "The U.S. Army sergeant whines that the US treated him worse than the Taliban as he faces a life sentence for desertion." As a reader, I'm not sure if FOX News or MSN is responsible for writing the description, but whoever did it did a very poor job.

There are discrepancies between style. In the title, 'United States' is abbreviated as 'US," and in the description, it is first abbreviated as 'U.S.' and then 'US.' The thing that stood out the most to me, however, was the word choice. Saying that the sergeant 'whines' is not an appropriate word to use in this situation and suggests that the news agency believes Bergdahl is being outrageous. Ultimately, the word choice clearly shows the bias of the news agency, which is something that should be avoided.

The article itself appears pretty unbiased, which leads me to wonder where the description itself originated from, as it's not found in the actual article. I believe the writing is strong for the most part and gives a nice general outline of the events leading up to this point, as Bergdahl now awaits his sentence.

There were a couple points at which I was confused by the writing. This paragraph was confusing:

"Bergdahl, 31, from Hailey, Idaho, says he never quite knew where he stood with the Army as he performed “administrative duties” while awaiting his desertion trial."

First off, the article does not explain what these "administrative duties" are, and the language makes me unsure when, in fact, he actually performed those "administrative duties."

The next paragraph was somewhat confusing as well:

“Here, it could be the guy I pass in the corridor who’s going to sign the paper that sends me away for life,’’ he says. “We may as well go back to kangaroo courts and lynch mobs.”

The article makes it unsure as to where "here" is. I can assume that it is the courthouse in which his trial will be held, but a tidier description to lock down the exact location would have been extremely useful.

If I do end up ever posting any of my feature stories online (I haven't been able to yet, as the GSA story was cut by administration), I hope to create a quick description to go with the title of the article. Of course, I'll plan on avoiding using biased language in the description, unlike this article.

The link to the original article is here.

This week, I helped produce the show and several Raven Minute episodes. I think we're doing a better job of getting the shows done on time, and though we're still not perfect, we're doing better than we were before.