An Examination of The Non-bias Story on Boxing for Military Cadets

Through the bias of placement one can assume this story is pretty important, the New York Times gave it a front-page portion. The headline is very straightforward but does give off a hint of bias on deeper examination, Despite Concussions, Boxing Is Still Required for Military Cadets. “Still required” is like another way of saying boxing should no longer be required, but this is still a pretty non-bias headline in my opinion. A better alternative might be Military Boxing Causes Concussions. The pictures are well taken from interesting bird’s eye and head-on angles and provide the reader with excellent visuals but don’t possess any bias of the writer or cameraman’s ideology. As far as titles, they just used the professional militaristic titles for each individual in the story, not revealing how they feel with other bias-related titles.

The numbers the story portrays do show bias, it says the Air Force had 72 reported concussions, but what it didn’t say was how many total attendees there are at the Air Force, it could be 100,000 and the number would be insignificant or there could be 100 and 72 out of 100 were inflicted. What the piece also does is spread out the information gathering by interviewing many different people. It shows both sides, as concussions being a necessity to prepare troops for ground combat and a potential long lasting injury and pain for someone who may well not even gain from boxing knowledge. I don’t recognize any assumptions the writer jumps to without proper information.

The writer is writing for the New York Times, so his audience is huge, someone from almost every part of the world and every culture will be reading it, and there isn’t anything in here to offend anyone. The way people are portrayed in the story is too, not offensive and just fact based. The writer doesn’t cross any political lines, which might be difficult when writing about the military. The sense I get from the piece is this is just an unfortunate necessity of being in the army to prepare individuals for war. The story does a good job of staying non-bias.