The Blurring of Lines

Eric Trager's blog "Palin at Fox Will Blur the Line Between News Analysis and Politicking" is an engaging article meant for those with their own strong political views. The blog also caters more to the democratic side of politics. The title of the blog mentions Sarah Palin, later mentions Mike Huckabee's show as terrible, and indicates that Fox News' integrity should be questioned with three republicans on its payroll. The blog brings up an evermore popular idea, having politicians as newscasters. The blog criticizes this trend because the author, Eric Trager, says that it would be difficult to discern between real news and the newscasters political agenda. Because the blog is written in an informative but casual tone, the blog becomes very compelling and the author seems more believable. This is also enhanced by the layout of the webpage. The page is set up like a newspaper article, with links on the sides and bottom to other political articles and videos. These other sources of information create a sense that this blog is a trustworthy political blog. Because of all these factors, the fact that this article was a blog does not affect my belief that it is trustworthy. In this case, since the blog is published on a news website, it is no different than an editorial in a newspaper. The analysis of this blog is very similar to the ones in class as in every analysis we've done, we have looked at different aspects of the media and talked about how they can be interpreted and who they are meant to be interpreted by.