Detecting Media Bias: Article on Ukraine
Ukraine is compared to Poland and portrayed as a failure. This is both economically and politically. The wealth of Poland is claimed to the thrice the one of Ukraine(Hakim, 2014). the poor performance of Ukraine economically is attributed by the author to be the failure to fully adopt capitalism. Other factors that may play a part in this are not considered. The failure of the system in Ukraine is claimed to be caused by the greed and corruption of the leaders and yet there is no evidence presented to prove that. The author is probably not a resident of Ukraine and the contributions used are from persons that seem to be against the government of Ukraine.
The customs police are accused of harassing businessmen, a claim that emanates from the victims themselves. There is no chance given to the authorities to explain this treatment of the entrepreneurs by custom authorities. There is contradiction in the sentiment that the production of steel by Ukraine has fallen since the demise of the Soviet Union. Communism was supposed to be backwards and limiting production. Naturally, it would be expected for Ukraine’s production to improve with the elimination of communism.
Furthermore, the author claims that Ukraine may have lagged behind economically as a result of the education system not changing to accommodate capitalism, and this might be true. There is also the opinion presented that after so many years of socialism, Ukrainians may have had a difficult time adapting to the free market system. The only sensible difference between Ukraine and Poland is in their formulation of policies regarding trade and market, Poland may have come up with better and friendlier policies than Ukraine leading to a better performance.
Reference
Hakim, D. (2014). Log in – the new york times. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/business/international/in-ukraine-a-wish-to-be-a-bit-more-like-poland.html?ref=business&_r=0 [Accessed: 14 Mar 2014].