The Issue of Arizonas SB 1070 - Essay Example

Persuasion, Politics, and Propaganda Essay: The Issue of Arizona’s SB 1070 Persuasion, Politics, and Propaganda Essay: The Issue of Arizona’s SB 1070 One of the hottest political issues in recent years is Arizona’s new stringent immigration law, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, more popularly known as the SB 1070 (Archibold, 2010). This law, which aimed to spark a crackdown on illegal immigration (especially in the state of Arizona where there is a large percentage of Hispanic immigrants), has been called as racist by critics, but has been praised by supporters as an important step in curbing illegal immigration (Archibold, 2010; Robbins, 2011).

In this case, the researcher would try to delve deeper into this issue by analyzing two articles about SB 1070, the first article describing the issue in affair objective way, and the second article describing the issue in a biased way. The researcher would try to look at the content and the context issues in the two articles, and would illustrate why these articles are classified as either objective or biased. In addition, the researcher of this paper would also look into the possible impacts of public misinformation especially by media professionals, making the public vulnerable to political persuasion.

Before the two articles will be discussed, the researcher thinks that it is important first to clarify the meaning of the following key concepts: objectivity, subjectivity, credibility, persuasion, and propaganda. According to Encarta Encyclopedia, objectivity actually refers to “ability to view things objectively: the ability to perceive or describe something without being influenced by personal emotions or prejudices” (Encarta, 2009). Meanwhile, subjectivity refers to “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions” (Oxford Concise English Dictionary, 2008).

In addition, credibility refers to the “quality, capability, or power to elicit belief” (Collins English Dictionary, 2003), persuasion as “the act of persuading or the state of being persuaded” and propaganda as the “systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2000). The first article, which I consider as an objective narrative to the controversial immigration law issue, is the article of the New York Times entitled “Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration” (Archibold, 2010).

The good thing about this article is that it presents the view of both the ones who are for and against the controversial immigration law, as well as presenting its possible cons and pros as supporters and opponents of the law views them. In this case, the article first defines the nature and the purpose of the law, and presents that while opponents of the law fear that it may be a “a recipe for racial and ethnic profiling” (Archibold, 2010), it also did not fail to indicate that the supporters of the law view it as “an indispensable tool for the police in a border state that is a leading magnet of illegal immigration” (Archibold, 2010).

Meanwhile, the biased article that I chose was the article written by Ted Robbins, entitled “The Man Behind Arizona's Toughest Immigrant Laws” (Robbins, 2011). The fearful components of this narrative are the fact that the article forwards unfounded conclusions just to justify the passage of the law, stating that illegal immigrants are actually invading the country, especially Arizona (Robbins, 2011). Some of the unfounded conclusions that the article indicated was the fact that “illegal immigrants are responsible for much of Arizona’s crime” resulting tom the fact that “he admits to feeling uncomfortable with the way society is changing in Arizona” (Robbins, 2011).

In addition, the article also remarked that Arizona’s problems are actually due “partly to Mexicans' and Central Americans' way of doing business” (Robbins, 2011). From these unfounded conclusions, it can clearly be seen that public misinformation are indeed done by media professionals, leading to biased political persuasion. Reference List Archibold, R. (2010). Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration. In New York Times Online. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.

html Robbins, T. (2011). The Man Behind Arizona's Toughest Immigrant Laws. In NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88125098 Encarta. (2009). Objectivity. In Encarta. Retrieved from http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861684274/objectivity.html Oxford Concise English Dictionary. (2003). Subjectivity. In WordReference.com. Retrieved from http://www.wordreference.com/definition/subjectivity Collins English Dictionary (2003). Credibility. In TheFreeDicitonary.com.

Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/credibility Collins English Dictionary (2003). Persuasion. In TheFreeDicitonary.com. Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/persuasion American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (2000). Propaganda. In TheFreeDicitonary.com. Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/propaganda