Sunday, April 25, 2010

What does the term "controversial" mean?

Once again the media is stirring up trouble, focusing more on promoting a particular point of view than in giving their readers a greater understanding of the issues at hand, yellow journalism at its best. A law is going through the Arizona Legislature that allows: police to make a citizenship/residency check of people already detained for another unrelated offense. The media is calling this a controversial bill and fanning division by falsely saying that the bill allows police to stop people on the grounds of race or accent or accent. This is an outright lie.

What is the first thing a peace officer asks when making contact: "Do you have ID?" If you do, you're on your way (assuming you're not under arrest for the reason he stopped you). If you don't have an ID you're asked to provide your name, date of birth, and Social Security number. What are things most illegal immigrants don't have: Social Security numbers, Driver's Licenses or State IDs. At this point, and only at this point, police officers can determine if the stopped individual is a citizen or a legal immigrant.

One may or may not agree with the bill. One may see problems with this. I do. But simply calling it controvesial every time one mentions the bill is a clear example of media bias.  What exactly does it mean to be controvestial when, according to a Rasmussen Report,  70% of Arizona Voters Favor New State Measure Cracking Down On Illegal Immigration including over 50% of Democrats.

So what does controversial mean? It means that the writers and editors involved in publishing the article are trying to sway public opinion. They don't like the bill and are trying to delegitimize the bill by implying that it's support it limited to a fringe element.

The irony of it all: that Che supporters would find something wrong with wanting something out of the mainstream.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

what?

Post a Comment