NHS- Bias Articles

One article published by ‘The Guardian’ called ‘After this crisis, remember the NHS is not drained by migrants but sustained by them’ emphasizes the importance of migrants and highlights the role of migrants with a positive connotation, whereas an article published by ‘Daily Mail’ called ‘Sickly immigrants add £1bn to NHS bill’, casting a sense of frustration and fury towards migrants. The two headlines observed from the articles by ‘The Guardian’ and ‘Daily Mail’ distinctly demonstrates the influence of bias. Bias can be defined as language that supports an ideological position, either explicitly or implicitly. When we see subjectivity in pieces of writing that should be objective, we can claim that they are biased. In theory, good journalism tries to avoid bias. In practice, this does not always happen.

Within both of the observed articles, bias is present, as both articles are seen to hold an opinion towards migrants and their effect on the NHS. While one article gives off the connotation that migrants are wasting money and are a burden to the society as the money used on migrants could be used on other factors, while the other article gives the connotation that migrants are an essential part of society and should be praised instead of being shamed. The article published by ‘The Guardian’ holds a more left side(liberal) view from the political spectrum, for instance, the headline employs word choices such as “sustained” and “remember”, alerting the audience about the importance of migrants, hence giving a more positive connotation towards this issue. On the other hand, the article published by ‘Daily Mail’ holds a more right-hand side(conservative) view from the political spectrum, for instance, from the heading itself they use word choices such as “Sickly” to describe immigrants. Furthermore, this article quotes Migrationwatch UK, which is another biased platform that holds strong views towards immigrants. Hence, as the article employs statistics and quotes from such a biased platform, this would inevitably result in a more biased article.