Evaluation of Genre Sources

An on going controversy in the healthcare field has been states passing bills legalizing doctor assisted suicide.  Last year in California, the assisted-death bill passed.  There are many sources online giving insight to this controversial topic.  Two informative ones are The Sacramento Bee and The Huffington Post.

Verisign. ".com". 08/22/12 via wikimedia. Public Domain 

The Sacramento Bee:

URL: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article35504295.html

The Sac Bee is a credible source—I know because I am from Sacramento—so the .com ending is not troublesome. In some cases, the credibility of some websites could be questionable because this is the most commonly used domain for most sites.

Author: Christopher Cadelago.  He is a reporter at the Sacramento Bee and graduated from the University of California, Berkley in 2008.  Online he appears to be qualified to write an article about the Catholic Churches stance on assisted suicide.

Last Updated: This web page was last updated September 16, 2015.  Nothing is out of date; It was a fairly recent article during the lobbying of the Death with Dignity bill.

Purpose: The article was written before the bill had been passed.  It is meant to inform the audience about the Catholic Church’s stance on assisted suicide.  The tone of the article makes Christopher seem a little bias against the church claiming that the Catholic church has constantly meddled into state affairs.  He could possibly be trying to persuade

Graphics: There are two pictures.  One is of Bishop Jamie Soto appearing to be passionately arguing and the other is a picture of Brittany Maynard, the case that sparked the debate of the assisted suicide legislation, on the dais of the Senate Health Committee.

Position on Subject: Cadelago seems to have a bias against the Church.  From this article, it can be inferred that he believes the Church uses money and influence to meddle into state affairs. Since this article was written during the time of the legislation not yet passed, he could be trying to persuade his reader against the church.

Links: There are not links in the actual article, but after the article there are related articles and the links to them listed; All of the links are articles from the Sac bee.

The Huffington Post:

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/right-to-die-california_us_560c6037e4b076812700b6d8

Similar to the Sac bee, the .com domain could be concerning but since the Huffington Post is a well known and credible source it is not concering

Author: Mollie Reilly.  On her Linkedin, she appears to have a lot of experience with writing and reporting.

Last Updated: October 16, 2015.  This was again a fairly recent date so nothing on the site is out of date.

Purpose: The purpose is to inform the readers about the passing of the assisted suicide bill.

Graphics: There is a video in the beginning which talks about the bill and the passing of it—similar to the content in the article.  There is also a picture of Brittany Maynard’s mom holding a picture of Brittany about her experience with assisted suicide.

Position on Subject: She seems mostly unbiased about the bill and is just reporting the passing of it.

Links: There are many links throughout the article.  Many are of official documents like the End of Life Option Act and Jerry Brown’s signing statement.