Debunking Media Violence (formal tone)

I liked the opening of this persuasive piece, the author used to introduce the topic violence in the media by using the example of “Tom and Jerry” to catch the reader’s attention. The essay was well structured and used effective diction yet the essay wasn’t as strong as I expected it to be. The author tried to support both sides. At first the author starts off by presenting how media violence has an influence on youth which makes them violent but the author carried on how the media doesn’t have an influence the youth and that it’s the parent’s responsibility so the media shouldn’t get blamed for. I felt that the author wasn’t clear with what he was trying to prove since he was trying to point out facts for both sides.

The essay needed stronger facts to support his points. Although the author used opinions from professionals, they weren’t facts; they were opinions so the author didn’t research the right facts to support his/her argument. Therefore, the author used base rate fallacy just like one of the previous persuasive pieces because he/she used weak evidence to make a judgement. The author should have gotten information from various different experts to see if there is any difference in their opinions.

I found some errors which didn't make this piece very efficient, for example "Even if you don't believe the argument that violence in the media doesn't cause any problems with our children, you need to take matters into your own hands. Watch what your children are watching". Henceforth the author didn't take his/her time to edit and use the right techniques to make it formal than informal.

The editorial could have had combination of long and short sentences to make it more interesting. Even though this editorial was written in a formal tone, the author still used abbreviations. Instead of writing the full word of a number, it used numbers for example, “This is just one incident that has occurred over the past 10 years that groups are concerned about”. What made this article somewhat effective was because it had couple of rhetoric questions which made the reader think about the issue. Overall, the author organized the essay well as it flowed nicely, used appropriate vocabularies, and few techniques but it was lacking facts.