Text II: Should the Press be Human?

Teaching objectives  1. Examining the professional ethic of journalism and other professions.  2. Discussing the conflicts between professional ethic and human nature.  3. Knowing something about John F. Kennedy, his family and the assassination.

Organization of the text  Part I: (Para 1): Introducing the topic  A hypothesis concerning the action of the photographer who shot the picture of the death of Oswald in the assassination case of J. F. Kenney.

Organization of the text  Part 2 (Para2–4): What a journalist should do when facing the dilemma in work.  Para 2: Journalists’ professional ethic vs. their cold-bloodedness.  (Development pattern: the thesis statement + illustrations of a photographer in India and a soundman in Nigeria.)

Organization of the text  Para 3: A dilemma of journalists: to join in and take sides or to be absolutely objective.  Para 4: The guidelines of the profession of journalism.

Organization of the text  Part Three (Para 5 –7) Further argument: Although journalists should try hard to fulfill their duty, there should be some point where they should behave as a human being.

Organization of the text  Para 5: The case of a birdman accident in which a journalist who behaved inhuman. (“But it leaves out a lot” i.e. it is more than that.)

Organization of the text  Para 6: When our professional ethic is in conflict with other things, we should try to stick to it.

Organization of the text  Para 7: In any profession, there may be something more important than just sticking to professional ethic.

Organization of the text  Part 4 ( Para 8): The conclusion  The author presents her thesis statement explicitly, i.e. what I think a news man should do.

Rhetorical focus  Sliding Scale  Persuasion ↑ Argumentation 1)appeal to emotion 2)aim to convince the reader & move him to some action 3)achieved by arousing in the reader emotional responses that are likely to urge his to take some action. 1)appeal to reason 2)aim to show the truth of a statement & make the reader acknowledge its correctness 3) achieved by rigid and careful reasoning

Rhetorical focus  Persuasion and argumentation are used almost interchangeably and we can hardly have one without the other.

Rhetorical focus  The present author not only handles her reasoning by using examples to prove that what she says (i.e. the behavior on the part of the journalists and TV people who are far from being human) is nothing but the truth, but also relies on diction and tone in the examples (staggering pictures, amazingly cold-blooded, making sorrowing Indian family bury and rebury its dead, holding up a Nigerian execution ( followed by next page)

Rhetorical focus  while he adjusted his sound equipment, ) to stir the feeling of the reader who might feel outraged at those journalists and an urge for immediate action.

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