Written in reference to: Zimmer, Carl. “Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 June 2017.

The title of this article best conveys its summary; Oldest Fossils of Homo sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species. A finding like this changes everything; our past theories, our present knowledge, and any future assumptions in regards to modern human evolution. The discovery of this specimen not only affects the research of several scientists across the board but will also likely be included in future textbooks. This article is proof that what we know is constantly changing. Due to its significance, the reach of this article, and that a find like this will surely go down in history, I feel that this article could have been more meticulously written. Easier said than done of course, but I believe the media bias is more to blame for the quality rather than the author himself. Modern media outlets, like the New York Times, control what the public hears and often modify evidence or take quotations out of context. While a reputable source, I found several issues with this particular piece in that it seems to leave out quite a bit of key context.

What’s problematic about writers quoting people in articles like this one is that it seems like, more often than not, they will quote someone, not explain anything, and move on to the next paragraph. I am not a journalist myself, and while I do not understand this writing style, there is clearly a pattern. The problem with this is that it leaves out vital background information and also little room for any contrasting opinions. As a global news source, one would think that they would care to have contrasting global views, but media bias strikes again. For example, one of the points Zimmer quotes is that of Philipp Gunz who claims that this finding proves that humans did not evolve from “a single ‘cradle of mankind’” but rather on the entire African continent. In an attempt to explain this point, the reader gets lost in the history of our evolutionary past, and he never really addresses this point. What I mean is, he does a good job of explaining the ‘out of Africa’ model, but fails to address the idea that this paleoanthropologist seems to think that humans did not evolve from one single place but rather emerged all over Africa. Maybe that is not even the point he was trying to make, but the writing and quote selection leads the reader to believe as such. Gunz is partially correct, we assume, in that this finding proves that humans evolved all over the African continent before ever migrating anywhere. His assumption leaves me wondering, however, does he not hold the evolutionary ‘Adam and Eve’ theory to be true? (The evolutionary ‘Adam and Eve’ are believed to be our very first anatomically modern human ancestors born somewhere in Africa somewhere around 300,000 years ago). This and a few other quotations in the essay definitely left me guessing.

As aforementioned, media bias plays a factor in the composition of this article. The word choice on the second page conveys the media bias directed towards a largely western audience. Zimmer says that about seventy thousand years ago, a group of “Africans” migrated off the African continent. Right away this raised some red flags for me. Why did he not say “Homo sapiens”? Why not call them “people”? The word choice “Africans”, while true, effectively distances the audience from the idea that we all evolved from the African continent and that at one point, our entire species had dark skin. By distancing ourselves from this truth, we further segregate the western population and perpetuate its archaic ideals of cultural evolution. The use of this word was probably subconscious on part of the author. The fact that it may have been subconscious, however, further reveals western ideals and thinking that Zimmer caters to in his writing.

Another word choice red flag in Zimmer’s essay was the use of the term “thermoluminescence” on the fourth page. Thermoluminescence is a property that describes a material that accumulates so much energy over time that it practically glows when exposed to high temperatures. As aforementioned, scientists struggle with conveying technique and jargon to readers outside of their field. He could have added just a few words here to simply say what it even is, but instead he “name drops”, essentially, and goes on to say that it “calculates how much time had passed”. It’s not even thermoluminescence that does the calculating, it’s only a property that helps one radioactively date a material. The assumption here is that many readers would not care enough to know. I assert that if a reader cares enough to get this far in the article, they probably care about the methodology. His word choice and lack of description distances the public from science while perpetuating it as something that is “too complicated to tackle”. Once again, Zimmer distances the public from the truth while, ironically, attempting to educate them.

One final example of media bias is the journalism methodology of leaving out a conclusion. For some reason, the article just ends. He quotes another researcher, again without really explaining the quote, and then just ends the article. I’ve seen this pattern before, and, again not being a journalist, I don’t understand this method. Why leave the readers hanging? Why leave out a summary? A good conclusion would leave readers with a talking point, something learned from the article, a “moral of the story” of the significance if you will. Instead, the author probably assumes that the reader will see the title, read maybe the first paragraph, and then move on to the next thing. The thought process must be: if the modern reader, with a short attention span due to the pace of our modern lifestyle, does not even get to the end of the page before moving on, why bother writing a conclusion?

While the author clearly has the credentials to report on such a significant finding, western media bias continues to shroud public from the truth in, admittedly, very subtle ways. As if the struggle for the scientific community to convey data in a simple and interesting way is not hard enough, the media bias in public news sources adds an additional obstacle that is not faced, as severely, when publishing in scientific journals. All things considered, his article is well written in that is serves its purpose; it is simple enough to understand, concise, and caters to the ideals of the western world.