“‘We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times, where there are no secrets from the government.’”. When reading this line do you feel a sense of paranoia, uneasiness, or discomfort, or do you feel that this claim is meaningless words meant to scare the masses, and rupture the public views of the government? Regardless, this statement has most likely had some form of emotional impact, large or small, on its readers as it was meant to when used by both Justice William O. Douglas, and again much later by Alan Ehrenhalt. The purpose of this essay is not to analyze this one line, though, but rather this one line’s purpose is to provide a small window into the broader view of Alan Ehrenhlt’s “The Misguided Zeal of the …show more content…
The first category is ethos, otherwise known as credibility or trustworthiness. The bulk of the ethos in “The Misguided Zeal of the Privacy Lobby” can be found near the top of the article where multiple main positions are covered. The first is Ehrenhalt’s college education consisting of his masters degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which alone forms a steady foundation of a strong ethos as a writer. After college Ehrenhalt worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, a senior editor for Governing magazine, and wrote for multiple newspapers including both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. On top of a lengthy college education, these positions help build up Ehrenhalt's ethos, making his overall credibility very convincing. Unfortunately, though, this grandiose history of journalism, despite how powerful it is, only works as a counter balance to the weakest point in Ehrenhalt’s article being his choice of