Assignment One: Unit Four

The stories featured in the SF Gate, LA Times, Fox News, and PBS News consist of plans that Obama our country's president elect has for when he officially takes office, and stories about local news. Most of the news stories tend to be centered around local news stories except for the PBS News which is centered more on national and international news coverage. All of the news sites have overlapping news coverage on Obama's plan on dealing with our country's economic crisis, who he has named as his economic advisers are, and who his busget boss is. There are also overlapping stories on Zimbabwe refusing entry into their country, and on Hugo Chavez' election situation, as well as coverage on the Tibet and China crisis with Tibet not gaining enough autonomy. There are differences in smaller stories from site to site in what they decide to cover especially in the case of local news stories due to it being local to that city and or county. Most differences in the news stories covered on each site I believe occur from there being different journalists writing and interpereting the stories covered in their own way. Not everybody will write exactly what other people will write and not everybody covers stories in the same manner. Separating fact from opinion can be difficult at times depending on how the message is relayed in the story, but facts would be things or statements that are well known and have been proven to be true, where opinions are beliefs or statements made by individuals based on presumptions and have not been proven to be true. For example if apples can be red, green, or yellow can be proven so it's a fact not an opinion. If we follow monetary policy and get rid of fiscal policy the economy would be in a better position is an opinion, because it hasn't been proven. The writers of the news stories form their articles with spoken statements from individuals directly involved in the stories being covered and generally use statistics about certain stories given by specialists directly involved in the stories being covered and then generally form their opinion in towards the conclusion of the article being written. Using the statistical facts a majority of the time along with spoken statements given from those directly involved in the stories being covered help to gain the reader's beliefe in what's being conveyed to them within the news story, it is then that the writers persuade the readers to believe their opinions given towards the conclusions of the news stories. When reading stories covered in the news the reader should always be somewhat biast about what the writer is conveying in his story in the sense that you always want to question everything being discussed in the story. This allows the reader to take in the facts being presented, information being presented, and the opinions being presented in the story so the reader can formulate their own information about the story and their own opinion so they can gain their own knowledge on the situation being discussed in the news story.