Journalistic Persuasion

One might define journalism as the act of putting into writing the happenings in the world at large. Events occur in the world and are relayed back to the world by reporters. Reporters are named such due to their effort to objectively report the facts, and objectivity is the key. To remain completely impassive, to transmit occurrences in the world back to the world unaltered and exactly as they were, is the main goal of journalism. In fact, this goal is so central to journalism that one might call it the journalistic ideal.
As with all ideals, however, this ideal is difficult to attain. Take the example of the sentence, "The Berlin Wall fell in 1989." This sentence appears to be fairly objective; the fact as stated cannot easily be argued and can be verified by a great many sources. However, the sentence may be stated in a different way: "The Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989." What these two sentences say is basically the same, but the feelings portrayed by each are different. …