Garretson

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Jacob Garretson
Professor Dagher
26 April 2015
UWRT 1102
Final Extended Inquiry Project Reflection
1.) When I first started this project my proposal was following a path towards
arguing why we should put an end to biased sports news journalism. But through
a long progression it changed into showing and informing the public that it exists.
I also started the project with and idea that the news media would choose their
stories because they were paid off or their sponsors wanted them to support
certain ideas. Then through my research I found that the bigger issue was that
many large news media organizations would choose to report on stories that
would attract more attention or bring in more followers as opposed to the
important news and the things happening at the time. They would also have a bias
towards teams with a larger fan base. Then from their I started writing my paper
and I discovers that a majority of my thoughts and ideas were revolving around
the section oand favorability of the stories. Which means that they would tend to
select stories that favored one team over another and this is where I focused my
writing and attention from there on.
2.) My research was mainly conducted through the library homepage. I would search
the main points of a question I had and find a source to answer said question.
Then I would find questions for that source and restart my search and so on. I
started with a list of seven or eight sources, which I narrowed down to 5. There
were several reasons that I dropped a source. One of which happened to be a

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video in which I did not find useful because it provided a lot of the same evidence
and ideas already conveyed in other sources and it was not very specific when
explaining or giving details on an idea. Another source I dropped was because it
did not provide anything pertaining to what I was writing about or anything that
would help further my research. The sources that I did use were very helpful and
full of new ideas that provided good feedback on each other therefore increasing
my capability to convey the ideas I have and relay their ideas to you.
3.) When I first started my research I believed that the majority of my research would
go into racial and gender bias but as I moved along it slowly changed into a bias
amongst the reporters on stories. The bias was of what stories they chose to report
on. This caused me to focus my research around that topic and on how journalist
tend to decide on stories and why they decide on each story.
4.) The most challenging part about writing my essay was me also remaining
impartial. This is because I have always believed the media to be bias and
strongly believe that this will always continue. But if I do the research without a
bias and see both sides of the story I can provide reasoning for why I have this
belief. I also had some trouble with putting myself into my research because I am
not completely used to this but as I continued to write it began to flow well so I
caught on quick. When my essay was complete I felt as if I could have wrote an
entire book on the topic but I felt as if I fit it into a small paper very well.
5.) I have never had an essay project in which the topics were completely free of
choice and could be chosen by us. In every other case I had to choose from a list
of topics and I think this was the largest difference. I also belief this helped me
write more freely and indulge myself with the research much easier. I have also
never had a paper with this much time allotted for the research and this much time

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in order to create a topic that we can truly reflect upon. I think this also helped
because I could find ways to ask questions and find sources that best fit the path
of research I was trying to follow.
6.) Well to sum everything up I have learned a lot about the media as a whole and
individually. I learned about the bias present in todays society and how we tend
to follow a path the media creates for us. I think that I also learned about research
and how to find sources. I learned that when searching for sources always ask
questions and use those questions to find your next source or to find the answers
inside of another source. I learned that the best way to pick a topic is to choose
something that fits your interests and ideas.