Radio Rights

Upon searching sunday's edition of the Chicago Tribune, I stumbled upon an editorial that caught my eye. As a music lover, the title of the article instantly appealed to me. The editorial is called "Radio: Pay the band" and is written by the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board. The editorial is about radio stations neglecting to pay performers for the music that they made famous. The radio stations do pay the songwriters, but performers such as Aretha Franklin do not receive any form of pay for letting radio stations play the songs that they made famous. This issue has been brought to legislative attention via Representative Howard Berman in the Performance Rights Act. In Berman's act, small broadcasters (those making under $1.25 million annually in revenue) would only have to pay a flat annual royalty of $5,000. Larger stations would pay no more than $1,000 annually. Music stations are advocating to deny the act because they fear it may put many stations out of business, which would in turn hurt the performers because their music will not be heard.

I really enjoyed reading about this conflict, because it appealed through all three main appeals. The editorial appealed to me through pathos, because it made me feel bad for the performers like Aretha Franklin who are getting scammed out of their rightful money. It appealed to me through logos, because I feel that the argument is very logical. Why shouldn't performers be paid when songwriters are paid? Finally, the editorial appealed to me through ethos because I feel that it is ethical that the performers get paid. It is only fair that they get rewarded as well as the songwriters.

After reading the editorial, two main thoughts struck my mind. At first, I truly pitied the performers and didn't understand how our Constitution could allow this unjustice. It dawned on me that there are more important issues in this world and we are probably tying to find legal loopholes in our Constitution causing these issues. Does this mean that our Constitution, which we have had for the last 232 years needs to be changed?? Maybe. Don't the citizens of "the greatest country in the world" deserve a perfect constitution? I think so. After thinking about this I realized that performers already make a boat load of money, so the radical idea of changing our Constitution has subsided in my mind.

Overall, I enjoyed the article, but felt very manipulated by it. Since it was an editorial, it was heavily biased. The editorial fails to truly debate the enitre issue, only representing one side of the issue. There is only one paragraph for the opposition. The authors even states their opinion after introducing the issue: "Songwriters get paid, but performers don't. That seems unfair." The authors overwhelms the reader with their bias, which in the end does effectively convince the reader to accept the authors' view. To a reader that fails to rhetorically analyze the editorial, which is most readers, the editorial would appeal to them. This helps the authors of this editorial to gain support for their topic. So what makes a good editorial or article? Is it one that convinces the reader to agree with the author's point or is it a piece of writing that depicts two sides of an argument without the bias of an author? I'll let you decide.