BIAS EVIDENT IN MEDIA

Emails to government officials saying a terrorist group had claimed responsibility were written about by two news agencies, but with very different perspectives.

            Fox and NBC both reported on the emails, which said that a group named Ansar Al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attack on the American embassy in Libya, in which four Americans died.

            The NBC report had the headline, “U.S. officials: Benghazi emails reveal little new about attack response.” The first paragraph explains about the emails, while the rest of the article appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to make the reader doubt that this intelligence could be relied upon.

            The Fox headline read, “Lawmakers press administration for Libya answers after email release.” To their credit, the article did state that the group later denied the claims, but bias shows up here as well. The article didn’t spend much time on the emails, but instead spoke more about how the administration’s initial explanation didn’t match up with later intelligence.

            Overall, both sides appear to be trying to persuade the reader to believe something, instead of just reporting the news.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49528284/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/?ocid=twitter#.UIqcSHg1ZFL

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/25/lawmakers-press-administration-for-libya-answers-after-email-release/

NEW FUNCTIONS OF DNA DISCOVERED

A new genetic discovery has big implications for medicine and scientific thought.
Scientists previously thought that only one or two percent of the genetic code was actually used. The research group ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) recently published findings that at least 80 percent of DNA is chemically active.
"The genome is just alive with stuff. We just really didn't realize that beforehand," said Ewan Birney, one of the leaders of the project, in an article of The Sydney Morning Herald. ENCODE discovered that the majority of genes act like switches which activate or deactivate a command to build a specific protein structure.
It works like this: cells are made of proteins. DNA tells the proteins how to fit together to build the cell. Activate certain switches and the DNA will tell the proteins to build a kidney cell. Activate a different set of switches and you will get a blood cell, and so on.
The research also indicated that diseases such as diabetes and some kinds of cancer have a lot to do with genes. That means that if scientists discover how to manipulate the gene switches, it could lead to incredible breakthroughs in medicine.
"Most of the changes that affect disease don't lie in the genes themselves; they lie in the switches," said Michael Snyder, a Stanford University researcher in an interview with The New York Times.
For more information, here are a few links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark-matter-proves-crucial-to-health.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

http://www.genome.gov/10005107

STUDENT BEGINS BLOG

My name is Seth Houston, and I'm a writer. For the next few months I will be writing about news and current events as a project for one of my college classes. I am studying journalism at the University of Southern Mississippi and hope to somehow make a living in that profession.

I suppose it would be helpful to say a little bit about myself. I was born and raised in southern Mississippi, home educated through grade school along with my two brothers and four sisters, and studied for two years at a nearby junior college. I enjoy thinking and reading, am about six feet tall with brown hair and a red beard, and prefer ice cream to cotton candy.

This is actually my third blog. The first was done only for a week during a high school journalism workshop which was held at the same university I am currently attending. The second has been ongoing pretty much ever since then. It's sort of an autobiography concerning my progress as a writer. I also publish some of my articles and other works there.

There are a few reasons I decided to do this blog separately from my other one. First, the content and style will be very different. Second, I'm required to provide two links in every post, so I figured for my introduction I could give the links to my other two blogs. Third, for this project I'm required to be professional, which I usually am, but sometimes it's good to have the freedom to be a little unprofessional, which I can do in my other blog.

Anyway, I hope I can be an insightful source for the news ahead. I'll try to make it as fun and creative as AP Style will allow, but it will probably get serious sometimes too. Happy reading, I'll see you next week.

First blog: http://www.usmsethhouston.blogspot.com/

Main blog: http://sethouston.blogspot.com/