Evaluation of General Sources

Senator Claire McCaskill "GM Recall McCaskill slams 'culture of cover-up' at Consumer Protection Hearing" 9/3/2015 via Flickr Attribution No-Derivs 2.0 license 

Throughout 2014, General Motors finally had to come to terms with it's years-long failure to effectively deal with the issues it created by effectively ignoring the issues that cropped up when the failing ignition switches were first produced. Both the article from Car and Driver and the New York Times article deal with one of the originators of this controversy, switch engineer Ray DeGiorgio.

URL

• The domain names of both the Car and Driver article and the New York Times article end in .com These are both reputable commercial news organizations. They are both credible.

Author

• The Car and Driver article was written by Clifford Atiyeh. Mr Atiyeh is a frequent contributor on both Car and Driver and its sister magazine Road and Track. He appears to be very well qualified to be reporting on the recall issues with General Motors.
• Bill Vlasic wrote the article in the Times. Mr Vlasic won a Pulitzer prize for his work reporting on tech manufacturing practices so it seems that he too has experience reporting on similar stories.

Last Updated

• The Car and Driver article was last updated on November 17, 2014. This dates the information some but it was also reporting on a discrete event withing the ignition switch controversy which makes it more than likely it is still mostly valid.
• The New York Times article was last updated on November 21, 2014. A similar rationale applies as with the Car and Driver article.

Purpose

• Both articles' purpose is to educate the reader about the ongoing issues with the GM ignition-switch recall fiasco as well as possibly warn them to take action if their car is affected. Both articles have no other discernible purpose.

Graphics

• The Car and Driver article article includes a photograph from the Senate hearings about the ignition switch recall. This provides some visual fodder for readers but does not otherwise particularly contribute to any additional understanding.
• The New York times article includes both a video by Ray DeGiorgio speaking about the ignition switch failures as well as an interactive graphic that allows readers to explore more media related to the recalls.

Position on the Subject

• Both newspaper and magazine have no gain if readers believe their writing. The only possible development from readers believing what they read is that if their personal cars are affected, they might take it upon themselves to have the recall taken care of. All of the information presented is easy to verify with other sources.

Links

• As both are news articles, neither presents exhaustive sources. However, both provide links that would allow the reader to exhaustively research the topic. In fact, the Car and Driver article includes 13 links while the New York Times article has it's interactive graphic that includes a similar number of related articles.