Saturday, July 23, 2011

Crappy writing

Today I woke up, grabbed my coffee and plopped down in front of my laptop to perform my morning ritual of scanning interesting articles while the coffee does it's work of waking me up. Yet again I was confronted with a story about "Free healthcare", in which the author of the article derisively assumes that her readership is full of idiots.

I think one of the things that bothers me about this article, is that it does a crappy job of sensationalism. I really really miss the days when reporters were a little less biased. Ok Miss journalist, we now know that you are a supporter of the Right, which is fine you have that right, but I shouldn't be able to tell it by what you wrote. Do you just spout what your compatriots tell you to, or do you actually do your own research? What are these studies that you are citing that state that preventative health care costs more? There are a lot of smoke an mirrors in this article. She cites a study from the Journal Health Affairs, yet gives no more specifics than that. Going through the Advance Online Articles at their website I "think" I found the article she is talking about, but am unsure because she didn't give a DOI number or even the name of the article, no nod to the authors of the study.

Quite frankly I can't think of any area of writing that this piece succeeds in other than a waste of space. We the people are getting sick and tired of overly biased reporting, half-truths, crappy reporting, and even crappier writing in general.

I'm not trying to set myself up as a perfect writer, I know I'm not, and I do realize that this is an Op-ed piece. I'm just really disappointed in the route the writer went to get their point across. It was filled with snarky comments and logical fallacies, granted it's opinion, but if you want me to take you seriously, then write your Op-ed piece with as much research and seriousness as you do for any other article.

Ok, my rant is over for the moment, until another unwitting person ticks me off before I've drank my coffee.

1 comment:

  1. This would be just considered another rant of the non-coffeed Sarah if it wasn't so true! All the reporting (written and video) has gone south recently.

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