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1. Should Factual Writing
Contain Bias?
The dictionary defines bias as an “inclination or prejudicefor or againstone
person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.” In factual
writing, this could mean a newspaper being biased to a political party or an
ideology, for example The Times heavily supports theConservativeparty and is
a right-wing newspaper.
Bias can be bad, for example, journalists can be biased when interviewing
people by cherry picking. Cherry picking is where they will take something that
someone has said during an interview out of context to make them sound a
certain way, often they do this to either paint the interviewee in a bad light or
essentially foul mouth an ideology or a concept that they do not agree with
fundamentally. This means that you are getting the opinion of the journalist
rather than the interviewee. Say if I reviewed an album and said “the album
isn’t very good but it does have its moments”. A journalistreporting on this
could quote me saying “the album isn’tgood”. These would be my words, but
it doesn’tgive the full opinion or information that I providein the initial
review. The journalistcovering this could cherry pick here if they do not like
the artistor they do not like me, so that both get; painted in a bad light.
Another example of bias in factual writing that could be considered bad is the
bias that is shown in newspapers, for example, and example of a far left
newspaper is The Sun, which is heavily biased to the Labour party, which is the
biggest left wing part in our political landscape. The Sun supports the Labour
party as its readers do. As their readers are left wing, mostof them won’t want
their views challenged, so they justread the Sun in order to read content that
supports their views. This is bad as the Sun can basically say anything as long as
it supports theLabour party and their readers will believe it.
Bias in Factual can be considered good when it is for entertainment rather
than for information. For example, I am planning on making a Star Wars
fanzine. As this is entertainment for fans of Star Wars, this will portray the
franchisein a good light, so basically I will be showing bias to Star Wars. In my
opinion, this is ok as the main aim of a magazine is to entertain as opposed to
newspapers which arefor information. The article that I am planning on
writing, which is ‘Why Star Wars Will Always Be Relevant’ shows a lot of bias

2. towards Star Wars. Itis basically me justsaying why the films and the brand is
amazing and why it’s so popular. There is no negative points that I make in it
about Star Wars, hence the reason that it is a biased essay.
To conclude, I think when you consider if a piece should be biased or not you
have to consider its purpose, so if it is for entertainment I think it is ok for it to
be biased, whereas if it is for information such as newspapers I think that It
shouldn’tcontain bias.