in tax increases.”5 I believe that a balanced statement on the issue would sound something like, Democrats claim the deficit package consists of an equal amount of spending cuts and tax increases, while Republicans argue many of the cuts are phony so that there were three dollars in tax hikes for every one dollar in real cuts.Bias by Omission is ignoring the facts that tend to disprove ones core beliefs, or that support the othersides claims. In order for one to catch this form of bias it helps to be knowledgeable about the particular issue that is being discussed. An example of this would be the issue surrounding George W. Bush and the amount of arsenic in our water. At first this issue might sound pretty damming to Bush, since the media portrayed it as though he 86’ed an EPA regulation further limiting the amount of arsenic that could legally be found in America’s drinking water. People now think that he is a madman and is killing innocent people by doing such a thing, most don’t know the whole story. “The National Academy of Sciences issued a report saying that there is too much arsenic in America’s water supply. The EPA follows suit with a new regulation lowering the permissible arsenic in our water supply from 50ppb (parts per billion) to 10 ppb. The water industry states it would cost about $6 billion in immediate capital outlays and about $600 billion a year from then on. That cost would not be an issue if it saved a lot of lives, however, the EPA says that by reducing the arsenic level in water we’re going to statistically save about 28 lives per year. That means it would cost $65 million per life.”6 Thus, proving that Bushs’ decision was rationale, if not justified. Bias by Placement is a pattern of placing news stories so as to downplay information supportive of opposing views. Does a story appear across the top half of the front page, or is it buried in the ba...
