Glenn Reynolds on Refugee Crisis

Media has tremendous power in setting cultural guidelines and in shaping political discourse. With the current upheaval happening in Syria and Americans demanding action, I became perturbed to think of the prejudice news outlets and the distorted information they give to the public. I hoped that during such a paramount time for our country that the news stations would strive to keep their personal opinions abroad in order for us to be rightly informed to handle this turmoil correctly. So I set out to discover if there was any change in the articles this week. Admittedly, for most of my blog posts I have routinely looked to Fox News for a notably bias article. While reading about the Syrian refugees this week, I stressed to find different news sources on the topic in order to find the most legitimate information.

I found an article on the Syrian refugee debacle written by Glenn Reynolds of USA Today. Disturbingly Reynolds included immense amounts of personal opinions through out his article. Debatably even more than those within the Fox news sources. Even from the very first sentence Reynolds is criticizing President Obama's tactics in handling the matter. He continues with a plethora of unchallenged assumptions opposing the refugee resettlement and repeatedly accusing Obama of being single handedly responsible for the entire crisis. Ending his article with, "The next president will find undoing this damage a tough job."

By using such strong language I am sure many readers were eager to jump on Reynolds' side without reading up on the matter for themselves which I find unsettling. Once again writers are using their platform in order to spread their opinion throughout the nation when all we really need is the truth. As a result, readers are focusing on personal democratic vs. republicans arguments while also "hating on" the president. When in reality we are currently facing a doomsday scenario where we should be concerned about the protection of people all over the world.

We may be misinformed and make detrimental decisions towards the overall wellbeing of our country, but hey, at least Glenn Reynolds got a paycheck.


Article can be found at:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/11/23/obamas-syrian-refugee-debacle-assad-libya-column/76219424/