The Jungle - Slanted Journalism

Slanted Journalism is intentional and used for the purpose of indoctrination. An author changes the context and word choice, purposely not telling a reader something to mislead them. Often excluding valuable information, to convince a reader to believe their biased view point. When actively sought out, slant has a greater chance of detection.

All forms of writing can contain slant (most do). The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a piece of communist propaganda. On the surface, it appears a grim story of suffering and hardship. A novel that narrates the tragedy of Jurgis Rudkus and his family, Lithuanian immigrants who travel to America to work in Chicago's meatpacking plants. Upon further examination, one can decipher Upton Sinclair's true goal in the telling of this story and discover his strong negative view and option on both the meat packing industry and his personal political stance.

A news article that contains slanted journalism can differ from other forms of slant because the slant makes a profit. Producing a profit by molding public opinion, outlines the goal of slanted journalism, make money not news. Journalist will slant their pieces of journalism in a particular direction to attract reader in addition to pushing their own beliefs. This can often translate into misleading headlines. On April 14, 2017, the Boston Globe published an article with the headline “US drone mistakenly kills 18 Syrian allies”. With the following paragraph reading, “WASHINGTON — A US drone struck and killed at least 18 members of an allied Syrian force this week, the Pentagon said Thursday, in the worst friendly-fire incident of the war there against the Islamic State.” At a glance, nothing appears wrong with what has been written, however, many people only read the headline and first peripheral paragraph of a news story. This shows the importance of providing accurate headlines that do not spin a false narrative as this one does. The third paragraph briefly explains that the allies mistakenly gave the US their own coordinates, calling the bomb to their location. A very important fact to this story only briefly gets touched upon. The author then goes into a completely unrelated story about how the US forces in Afghanistan dropped a 21,000-pound bomb on Islamic State forces, using the largest non-nuclear bomb ever employed in combat. Although both facts, the author abused the power they had over the reader to take their attention and turn it on the issues of bombs and then Trump. Clearly showing their biased views on this violence and increased bombing, both topics that do not even relate to the original article. It isn't until the 18th paragraph that the article re-focuses on the “series of missteps” that caused the friendly fire incident. The goal being to spin the article to grab a reader's attention (make them money) and push their negative narrative about war onto the readers. In doing so they made the facts hard to find and the military seem incompetent.

This shows similarities to how Upton Sinclair pushed his biased views of the meat packing industry in The Jungle. He would discuss the animals as though they had human characteristic, with feelings and emotions. "Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it -- it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life." - Chapter 3. Sinclair said this to make the reader connect and feel terrible about the fate these animals, speaking as though they embodied people who never had a chance at life.

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