Ethos and Pathos

I wouldnt say that a writer has a "responsibility" to appeal to Ethos and Pathos in and of itself, because the writer has a right to make any sort of piece that he or she wants. However, creating an effective ethos and pathos is essential to creating an effective piece, because if a person doesn't have any reason to believe the writer, the person won't.

However- and this was actually the question I was supposed to blog on- IN appealing to ethos and pathos, the writer has the responsibility to be real. This would mean, the only true way to appear credible is to actually be credible, and the best way to appeal to a person's emotions is not to bring them down or to shock the person into changing their belief. The Government and the media both have a way of not living up to those standards; because everything is so extreme. Because people are free to make claims (which is not a bad thing in and of itself), people will make all sorts of claims- and many of them are not well backed up. The media uses flashy images and news about people- most of it untrue- in order to gain money and attention. The government isn't really all too different from the media, because politics is essentially the attacking of one group in order to appeal to another (which is obviously not right- and why it doesnt live up to the responsibility). Many political arguments are not well backed, credible, and many of them are very stinging. However, sometimes they are presented with a false sense of appearing so, and though they are not truly credible, they appear to appeal to ethos, and so on.