Critique

(News article)

This article describes the racial and ethnic diversity in a Pennsylvania school, and attributing these factors to a lot of violence towards Asian children in the school. The article begins with a description of the surrounding area to develop an image of diversity for the readers. The first mistake I noticed was in the second paragraph:

"Inside is a cauldron of cultural discontent that

erupted in violence last month — off-campus and

lunchroom attacks on about 50 Asian students,

injuring 30, primarily at the hands of blacks.

The Asian students, who boycotted classes for more

than a week afterward, say they've endured relentless

bullying by black students while school officials

turned a blind eye to their complaints."

"...primarily at the hands of blacks." This is an inappropriate sentence, especially so early into the story, and especially because of the focus on race and ethnicity in this specific story. The reporter used "Asian" to describe Chinese, Japanese and Korean students, but then used the term "blacks" to describe African-American students. This is an inconsistency in wording and could easily be offensive. This writer should have checked his consistency and language more carefully. The source for this information is a secondhand account and lacks credibility, or so it seems. If the writer had included direct quotes or specific incidents, this source would have been more accountable. However, the writer did attribute the information received to the source (the Asian students), which shows that he (the writer) did pay attention to accuracy. There is no verification to the credibility of the account in the article, even though there may have been verification that the author didn't put into the story. The author makes another language inconsistency mistake in the next paragraph:

"Philadelphia school officials suspended 10 students,

increased police patrols and installed dozens of new

security cameras to watch the halls, where 70 percent

of the students are black and 18 percent Asian."

Again, the author refers to "black" and "Asian", instead of "African American" and "Asian", which could offend people of any color and looks inconsistent. The writer isn't using two parallel words to display equality and non-racism and this could upset readers. This language difference could be viewed as bias or prejudice and unfair.

"The Philadelphia school district acted with

"deliberate indifference" toward the

harassment and failed to prevent the Dec. 3 attacks..."

Again, the author fails to attribute credibility to the source, with no description of the source, no name and no depth into what "deliberate indifference" implies.

"Asian students say black students routinely pelt them with food..."

This sentence is messy and inconsistent, again. The wording isn't very intelligent or precise, either. The constant stress on blaming the black students could be viewed as racism, bias or unfairness and the author should have investigated into whether or not students of other races were harming and terrorizing the Asian students.

The article is a little bit long for the topic, and it gets a little too long towards the end, so the brevity could have been worked on. I followed the story right up until the last couple of paragraphs, where I lost interest in the story. The focus is clear, although some of the information, sources and affiliates are confusing and it was hard to tell how these sources related to the story sometimes. I think the author could have researched the story a little bit more and gone more into depth about the violence, the perpetrators, the victims and the outcome. I felt like the author was a little biased or stereotypical towards the "black students" who "bullied" the Asian students with the unequal wording to describe the races. The author didn't explore the "black students" side of the story; he/she didn't include any quotes from any of the accused, so the story seemed a little on-sided.

However, the story was pretty in-depth with concerns to the Asian students side of the story and the actions of the school and school-board members. The author dug up information and quotes from sources I would not have thought could add much to the story, but they did. The story made sure to mention criminal charges and legal matters so the reader was not left with any questions. Overall, it was a fairly thorough story with a decent length and proper attribution to sources and information.