Misleading?

Jake Roush
English 314
Misleading Graphic
September 15, 2009

New York Times (NYT) uses a pectoral representation to convey the magnitude of the SARS outbreak. They are using a graphical design by listing all epidemics in their own rectangular boxes. However, the assumptions that someone formulates is that these boxes are representative of the magnitude of the outbreak. Therefore, because the NYT is read by many different audiences, who may or may not have a comprehensive background in these epidemics, they are using a visual rhetoric to mislead the reader. The NYT should have a problem solving approach, before publishing this article, to identify their audience and the background they might have on the topic. Also, the graphic seems to lack a standardization of data among diseases, giving the reader a very inconclusive link to the text sizes. The title of the article has no correlation to the topics being depicted. Also, it seems like the rectangles with TB and malaria seem to have a more of an ethos than the title. This ethos seems to give an urgency and seriousness to the graphic. However, this does define the overall layout of a newspaper; the catching article that has urgency and interests the reader. This article is not meant to be informational; however, it is designed to catch the reader’s attention and give off a definite ethos throughout the graphic.