As stated in my last blog post, Doctor Who created history by casting a black woman as the doctor. It’s wonderful that this very white show is creating some diversity, but there is backlash to this casting decision. Which is exactly what the article “Doctor Who: Fan reaction to first black Time Lord exposes Britain’s deep divisions on race and gender” written by Alec Charles. 

This article was fairly well written, and on the surface, seems legit. However, a lot of articles seem okay on the surface, so with this article I am going to do a little bit of digging and analyzing of it. 

The first thing I check is the author. What else has he written? What are his credentials? Immediately looking at the article, it shows that Alec Charles, the author, is a Dean of Arts at a university. So right away I trust this author. However, I want to know more about him in order to truly know he is qualified. A quick look on his profile on The Conversation website shows me lists all his accomplishments, and lets me know he is qualified to be writing on this subject.

After checking the credentials of the author, I check the credentials of the news site itself, The Conversation. Just by a quick Google search, I can see that this site is very trustworthy, and almost never biased. I check out a few other articles, just to be sure, especially since I have never heard of this site before. Luckily, everything checks out. 

So now that I know the author is credible to be writing on this subject, I move to analyzing the actual content of the article. Before even reading it, I can see a lot of outside sources are linked within the article, which is a good sign. 

As I am reading the article, these links add a ton to what is already written. What Charles adds proves what he is saying. He links to fan forums and personal pages, all which show the divisions on race and gender. Including these links is really well done in this article. All the links work and add something to the article, they are not just there for show. This improves the overall quality of the article. 

After checking out the links and sources to the article, I check to make sure there is not any bias within the article. Reading through it, it seems that there may be a slight bias in the article. However, not enough to make it untrustworthy. Especially when the title of the article itself shows some bias. 

The entire premise of the article is the backlash of BBC casting a black actress on Doctor Who, so a little bit of bias shows through. However, it is not much. It is mostly facts and examples of said backlash. The author tries his best to not give his input. 

Image credit: BBC

If I had to grade this article, I truly believe it deserves an A. The author is highly qualified and credible, and it is written on a credible site. It has sources embedded into the article, which make fact checking easy, and there is little bias within the article. It was a high quality article.