1. Task 2
Should factual products contain bias?
Factual products are documents that contain information about events or subjects. The most
common forms are text books and leaflets. I believe that some forms of factual writing have to be
biased, otherwise there is no point in them.
The best way to convince someone is to show the arguments for only one side. Leaflets about health
issues and substances that are harmful to us need to be biased. It is important that they stick to the
message they are trying to get across, that the damage it does is very evident and not worth it.
However, if they start to mention that not a lot of tests have been done and some of the theories
have been proven wrong then people won’t accept that drugs are bad for them. Sometimes you
need to be biased to get the message across to the people who need persuading the most.
Sometimes here is no other way to get the message across. An example of a factual writing product
that would need to be biased is a leaflet for a president/prime minster that is running for election.
They need to prove why they are the best and why the public should vote for them. If they start
saying how they other politician’s policies are better than theirs people would vote for the other
guy. It’s easy to be too biased when it comes to these sorts of things so they need to gracious,
maybe get a few quotes from the locals so the compliments/insults aren’t coming directly from the
politician.
Another reason why factual products should be biased is because if you give people too many
options they often get confused. It results in them not having an opinion at all because they don’t
know what to think. This is why all articles have a little bit a bias in them. The main bias is in the
titles. They give the first impression on the story. If the title to a scandal is boring and civil then most
people won’t be interested in reading it. Showing the story in a certain light helps to make the
publics minds up fro them. This is important in stories about equal rights, something that should be
strived for and the media is a good way to achieve it.
Printing stories that portray the attacks as bad help
people realise how bad the situation really is.
However, being bias is a thing that shouldn’t be done when events are involved. The public have the
right to know what is going on in the world, in journalistic terms this is called the public interest.
Even though this is followed and the public are informed they sometimes aren’t informed about the
whole story. Every story has two sides and there are many
explanations for why it happens but only one gets published. Even
though there isn’t a rule about cutting out information the pubic
have a right to know the pro’s and con’s of every situation. For
example, leaflets about abortions that are only about the cons.
These are usually from religious groups that don’t believe them. I
believe that you should express your own opinion but shoving it
down people’s throats is a different matter. Give people both sides
and let them decide themselves on how they feel about the situation. Producing leaflets that say
abortion is bad and calling the people who get them murderers is the wrong way to approach the

2. situation. The leaflets don’t include the fact that if the child is born but the mother isn’t in the right
environment to raise it. The child’s life will be ruined. The quality of a child’s life has to matter to
someone. Why would you want someone to be born because life is precious but then suffer because
they don’t have the right privileges in life? If they printed stories about the cases where abortion
hasn’t be chosen but the child died anyway because of negligence then people will know, the child
suffers no matter what.
Most online articles only
state the facts. They are
very concise and don’t
include any sort of
opinion. They simple
state that facts an let the
public decide if they
agree with it or not.
Keeping the wording to a minimum makes the story easier to understand. Nothing gets
misinterpreted because it’s open to interpretation.
I think that, if the reasons are right, it is okay to be biased. If the information is purely the facts, not
facts to fit around an opinion, that’s acceptable. Showing the public the stats and odds will help
them make their own minds up. Factual writing isn’t about forcing people to think a certain way. Its
purpose is to educated, if bias has to be included to get the message across to the people who need
that extra push to understand then so be it.