Shan Ferguson writes:

It seems to me that any article is biased to the point of view of the author,I know that I do not write my articles from someone elses perspective.
I do not think that is a plausible approach to begin with,when you sit down to write an article you already know what you are writing about,what you want to say and most importantly how to make your perspective of the subject useful and beleivable to others.

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Rajkumar Kanagasingam writes:

Hi Chris,

Your comment, “This is really about salesmanship to handle objections to your arguments in advance and by doing so, even if the reader doesn’t agree with you at the end, they respect you for having considered the counter-arguments.” is reminding me a past incident in the later part of the 1987. After the major clash between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) and the India Army, Jaffna Peninsula in the nothern part of Sri Lanka, was left with nothing. I was at that time 20 and ventured to run a Bakery which was defunct after the war. In a fateful day nearly all the bread we baked in that day were roasted into a different form and colour, and was not known the reason. But I told the customers, before I sell the the texture and the structure of the bread. A customer told me, other won’t tell but you are telling. Though we made a loss and later on gave up the business, still I could rejoice those moments, at least in the middle of the war, I was fair enough.

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Dina at Wordfeeder.com writes:

Just the other day I posted the difference between copywriting and journalistic writing (news reporting) in my new blog, “Copy on the Fly.”

Advertising is biased, or subjective. News writing is (or should be) unbiased, or objective.

I think web articles are more “magaziney” than they are journalistic in nature.

Therefore, I agree with you, Chris.

Although you’re delivering information in your web articles, they’re more of a marketing or advertising tool than they are purely objective/informational.

Although your article CAN be unbiased. It really depends on what your purpose is in writing.

The “bias” comes in the form of emotional persuasion or one-sided argument. I have lots of fun with bias or opinion pieces and I’m sure others do too. Lots more potential angles and you can add a bit of zing, where you really can’t in news or information reporting.

Interesting.

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Edward Weiss writes:

The best articles I read are ones that have a strong opinionated voice behind them.

I may agree or disagree with what I’m reading, but I’m always certain of what the author’s viewpoint is. Think of Ann Coulter as an example.

You either love her or hate her but she’s a great writer and once you start in on an article of hers, you’ll be hooked until the end.

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Lance Winslow writes:

I had someone start a “Whole Blog” to counteract an article I wrote about the 250 year supply of Coal in the United States and how clean coal technologies will prevent pollution. They said my article was bias? Interesting, I guess I did not side with their opinion on the subject. It is interesting, that sometimes you can start a huge amount of controversy with an article that is somewhat bias, even if in your biased opinion you do not believe it to be bias at all?

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Christina Sponias writes:

Hi Chris and everyone!

I think we can’t please everyone and we have to accept our enemies when they condemn us for some reason. Each one has his or her point of view! Dina is right when she says that articles are more a marketing or advertising tool than they are purely objective/informational.
We don’t have the obligation to cover all existing possibilities in a topic…

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Christina Sponias writes:

Hi again Chris!
I was thinking about what you said and only now I really understand your point of view. We shall care about our enemies’ opinion and avoid their criticism. If we can’t be specific and give information about certain subject we better be general and just use this knowledge as a reference. If we don’t know everything about certain matter, we better don’t try to appear as if we knew everything about it!
We better be very careful when we write about anything, because there are many eyes reading our words.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Christina,

Actually, I don’t think anyone should accept their enemies who condemn then/us… Instead, decide to either learn from them or ignore them…but they are not worthy of recognition in terms of acceptance, unless you have a life lesson to learn.

I don’t avoid reading or listening to criticism because I want to learn the point of view from others, but I also don’t give validation to criticism that is given out of ignorance.

:-)

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Shan Ferguson writes:

That was pretty Harsh on your part Christina,even if someone is trying to condem you from just your point of view,you still have to acknowledege their right to have their opinion even if it is an uninformed one.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Hi everyone! Thank you for your messages! I was just considering better this question today, after facing the problem Chris mentioned in this post while writing my last article, because I had the intention to talk a lot about ancient symbols, but I understood that I had to explain them better if I wanted to use their example. I could not just throw half knowledge about this matter to my readers. So, I changed my mind because there was too much complication in this explanation and I wrote my article in a different way.
I didn’t mean we have to only care about other people criticism or that we have to run away from our enemies, but that we have to be responsible for what we write here. We have to care about other people’s opinion and be very serious when we relate something or we give any kind of information.
My indifference to other people’s opinion the day before was not wise. We cannot please everyone, but we better be careful so that we won’t provoke conflicts without reason.

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Lance Winslow writes:

If someone chooses to be your enemy and you feel they are hurting you in some way, then it is “sometimes” necessary to completely destroy them and one should not feel bad in doing so. Sometimes it is the best move, although always remember that discretion is often the better part of valor.

If you refuse to stand for something in your life you will live in mediocrity and that is not well advised either. Choose your battles wisely and when in battle the goal is to win decisively, not to stir the pot and allow your adversary to comprise a revenge-motivated sneak attack in the future. If you choose to destroy your enemy you must consider the future implications.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Hi Lance!

I personally never destroy my enemies, even when they try to destroy me. I’m not going to be like them!
I was just saying that we better try not to acquire enemies because we didn’t give full information about certain matter in our article.
We don’t have the obligation to cover all the existing possibilities in a topic, but we have to define our position in order to avoid unnecessary conflicts.

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Lance Winslow writes:

If one is worried about ruffling feathers out in the world and tries very hard not to, it is unlikely that they will ever assist in the forward progression of the human speices. You are bound to collect a few folks along the way and the harder you push the more that will try to push back.

Damn the Torpedoes, full-speed ahead!

Avoiding conflict at all costs will not work. The weak will inherit nothing, don’t kid yourself.

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Christina Sponias writes:

You are exaggerating Lance! We are only talking about biased articles; we are not talking about our personal philosophy of life.

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Lance Winslow writes:

Well, I am not going to stop writing articles based on my personal observations, massive informational input or outright experiences. If someone else tells me they are biased, well maybe they are based on reality. Many people believe that the PC world is the right way to do things, but denying reality only makes for really bad decision making and a rather screwed up society, observe.

So, if one is careful not to offend anyone, then eventually they can say nothing, and certainly not write 12,000 articles. Too often authors are afraid to write the truth out of fear of social damage to their personal character. I say to those; if you fail to say the truth, you are lying to the reader and the writer. So, it seems that there is a good basis for bias often enough and therefore I will write biased articles.

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Christina Sponias writes:

We better be careful and not offend anyone in our articles, because this Ezine is like a newspaper. People respect what we write here. We better try not to be condemned for writing biased articles, since we can change our article’s shape and cover only the aspects we want if we’ll define our position.
We have to be very careful and responsible for what we write. This is not a question of fear to be offended of rejected by our audience, but a question of professional integrity.

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Lance Winslow writes:

Sure, but I believe it is “irresponsible” to sugar coat issues, and that pretending, as not to offend, does a disservice to the reader in that if you do not say what you really think, that is a form of lying. It is unethical to lie.

Nothing should be more offensive to a reader than a writer who perpetuates lies. Lying is wrong, even if you call it “Political Correctness” and hold the writing out as socially acceptable.

It is often amazing that so few people see this and continually create falsehoods for the reader as to be careful not to offend. I hereby “Offend You” for the sake of argument. HA!

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Christina Sponias writes:

Now you lost my dear Lance, because nobody has more enemies than me exactly because I reveal the unknown truth about the human being. You can’t imagine how many attacks and humiliations I had to bear in my life exactly because I’m not a hypocrite that agrees with the general indifference!
I think this is another subject however. It doesn’t have anything to do with biased articles and the caution we shall have in order to avoid being condemned for that.

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Lance Winslow writes:

Sure that’s all understood of course, yet bias does have something to do with political correctness, as that in itself is a biased opinion adopted from the mass movement of society, rather than the individuals total personal view from true observation, perspective and experience.

So, even if you feel you have won in this matter, it is your bias of the subject allowing you to be biased and make that comment. I will give you your win in this case, since you have well documented your points of contention with actual observation and experience.

However, to the point of biased articles, that fail to give the truth and cower to societies trends as not to offend, I would say that they are unethical. So in reality a biased article based on real observation is not biased, but many call it biased because it does not fit their personal belief system or frame work that they have artificially created or worse off adopted from the masses of political correctness. Of course.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Forgive me because I delayed to send you a message, but I was talking with someone from Brazil through the MSN and the conversation couldn’t be interrupted!
I said you lost because I’m not a type of person that is afraid of the truth. I didn’t say I won the discussion. This discussion never ends!

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Lance Winslow writes:

Indeed, then “we” are both that type of person. So we both win. I have found that many people in Brazil are indeed very good writers and thinkers. Great Soccer Players too. Of course, that is stereotyping, but this biased comes from pretty decent intake of observation and experience.

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Christina Sponias writes:

Thank you for your nice words!
I have to say goodbye now because it’s too late here in Greece where I am!

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Shan Ferguson writes:

I would say that nobody has the right in life to condem somebody else for there personal beleifs as that would make them hypocritical to begin with,being that the larger portion of society is based on personal freedom to begin with no one else has the right to take that away from you.Seriously if your opinion varies from another you should both have enough respect to let the other person be themselves.

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Lance Winslow writes:

Shan,

Good points. No then what do we do with folks who attack those who write opinionated or biased articles? What do we do with humans who use personal attacks without references to their opposing views? This is where dialogue breaks down. If someone disagrees with an article do they have the right to pull the “PC Card” and attack?

It seems too many people feel it is their right to attack if they disagree, then as they attack they fail to back up their points of contention. This is problematic and typical of PC social engineering. Your thoughts?

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Shan Ferguson writes:

Well I for one never pretended to care about political correctness,personally I could actually care less about that perhaps I am just to Jaded by life in general at times.I write articles about the things that I personally exercise in the promotion of my Business and my Web Site,these things I am very familliar with and quite adept at therefore I choose to share my knowledge with others,thus promoting both Business and Website some more as I am giving this information for free instead of charging any money for it.I notice that some threads such as this one and the thread on writers vs Marketers seem to fuel a vast amount of opinion and some firey retoric bravo to us all for speaking our minds and writing what we want.

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Lance Winslow writes:

Shan,

Well I think you have the right attitude about the whole thing really, I concur with your views on this matter. By the way, I enjoyed clicking to all the informational links on your website, lots of good information there. Be well. Lance.

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