two sides to every coin

One of the things I have loved in my years of coming to UoB, were some of the exercises in year 1 and year 2, that helped me to analyse that I read in the media.

Now I've always liked to keep an open mind, and I'm generally suspicious of anything someone tells me is black-and-white. When people get so angry and heated about something they are bound to become blind to another side of the story or, in the case of politicians, are deliberately trying to draw attention away from evidence or incidents.

Welfare Systems (year 2), we had several articles to analyse choice words in the media, how the foreigner is labeled 'the asylum seeker' or' 'benefit scrounger', regardless of their real reason for coming to the UK. The single mum who doesn't work is one of thousands of people living off our hard earned taxes, it doesn't matter if a large percentage of that are acting as carers or genuinely struggling to find a job to balance their child's needs and their local opportunities. And not even that, but how sometimes there never is a right and a wrong, and there isn't always someone to blame.

University I feel has shown me the flip side of the coin in many people’s circumstances, it may not mean that there aren’t elements of truth in some articles published out there, but at least I'm not one of those people adding to the judgment and hatred without at least looking a little deeper into facts and what our perception has distorted.

One particular article I read recently I feel gives credit to the other side of the story is alongside Malala Yousafzai is being formally recognised with a joint-Nobel Peace Prize for her determination and fighting for her rights to getting an education, while those who are not the epitemy of western democracy, are being ignored and lost in the wars that are being waged. Now I may not agree with every word written on this reporting front, but to read articles from difference sources can help to give a perceptive I might not have considered or heard because it is being ignored just like this little girl is.