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Jaime Castillo

Professor Swiger

ENGL-1301-CR05

30 Jan 2022

Bias Essay

The fire that was talked about around the world, November 8, 2018, was a day no one

will forget. Everyone heard what had happened in California, the most devastating fire that has

ever happened in history. In an article by the Los Angeles Times they stated, “In the aftermath of

the Camp fire — 86 dead, more than 13,900 homes destroyed local and state officials said the

tragedy was unforeseen and unavoidable, an “unprecedented” monster of fire.”. “Fire in

Paradise'' was released on October 29, 2019, one year after the horrific event. It was produced

and directed by Jane McMullen. The documentary is from Frontline and aired on PBS. The

documentary was about the hardship that the residents of Paradise went through and who they

wanted to blame on. In the documentary, “Fire in Paradise ',' Jane McCullen successfully got the

audience to side with them to blame PG&E by using omission of information, unflattering

videos, and limited perspective.

In “Fire in Paradise”, by Frontline, they used omission of information. In an article

“Paradise' Explores A Previous Record Breaking Wildfire Season”, Scott Simon talks with

Lizzie Johnson about how climate change is affecting how fires are getting worse as the years go

on.  Scott Simon states this fact when he said, “And of course, the extraordinary burning we’re

seeing- is it fair to say without a doubt it owes to climate change?”. Lizzie Johnson agrees with

the belief. when she says, “Yeah, the conditions that we’ve been seeing in recent years, it’s just

unlike anything that firefighters and climate scientists have seen.” In “Fire in Paradise'' they
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bring up climate change, but they also talk about how it was due to PG&E refusing to turn off the

power on red flags days. They also discussed how PG&E neglected to consider how fast the

wind was still blowing. PG&E refused to take any of this information into consideration and

because of that, it was the PG&E power lines that caused the fire. Throughout the documentary,

images and videos of the town burning were shown, proving that PG&E were responsible for the

spread of the fire (Johnson).

Throughout the documentary they showed unflattering videos of the town of paradise on

fire and of the people that lived there. At the beginning of the documentary, they first show

everything looking nice and pretty and have people saying nice things about the town. Then a

couple of minutes later they show everything on fire and just chaos ensues. Videos of everything

being destroyed make the viewer feel the emotion of the people that went through their

experience. They showed hospitals, homes, and many other structures being destroyed. They

were using pathos on their viewers to show everyone that had watched the documentary to pull

strings on their hearts to make them feel the pain and to make them feel sad. To make their

objective to get their point across to make the viewer look at the topic the way they want them to.

There were only a handful of people getting interviewed after the fire and most of those were

professionals that fought the fire directly (“Fire in Paradise.”).

In “Fire in Paradise”, limited perspective was another form of bias. McMullen only had

policemen/phone operators, firefighters, nurses, legal personnel, and residents describe what

happened during the fire. Without having a rep from PG&E or any other outsider perspective.

All of them told their story on what happened on that day and had a negative impact on their

lives. Two of the stories are how they lost loved ones. How a nurse had to run through the

burning city to get out alive. How the phone operators had to listen to people die on the phone
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because they could not get help to them. The audience is forced to hear the stories of  the tragedy

that PG&E  caused from the fire, but there were no counter arguments shown by PG&E or other

outside sources (“Fire in Paradise.”).

Throughout the documentary, “Fire in Paradise”, McMullen was able to get the audience

to believe that it was PG&E's fault by using omission of information, unflattering videos, and

limited perspective. Omission of information was used when less time was spent talking about

climate change, but more time should have been spent on PG & E refusal to acknowledge their

faulty equipment and the wind speeds. They also pulled the heartstrings of everyone watching

with unflattering videos, showing everything on fire and the destruction of Paradise and by using

videos that showed some of the interviewees starting to break down crying. Throughout the

documentary it was hard to look at some of the videos of burning homes of the Paradise

community and hearing about the stories and what they went through. McMullen showed

interviews that supported their narrative and to make the audience believe the same thing

because the interviewers were firefighters, policemen/ phone operators, and residents. During the

viewing of “Fire in Paradise”, personal bias tried to get in the way of writing this paper. The

whole world has their own biases, and it does leak out all the time. Everyone who watches “Fire

in Paradise” will have an opinion of what caused the fire and may even discover other biases that

may be hidden in the documentary. 

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Works Cited 

“Fire in Paradise.” Frontline. Produced by Jane McMullen, season 2019, episode 7, PBS, 29

October 2019. pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/fire-in-paradise. Accessed 30 Jan. 2022.

Johnson, Lizzie. “'Paradise' Explores A Previous Record-Breaking Wildfire Season.” Scott

Simon. NPR.org .npr.org/2021/08/14/1027689293/paradise-explores-a-previous-record-

breaking-wildfire-season. August 14, 2021. Accessed 09 Feb. 2022. 

Johnson, Paige ST., Joseph Serna, Rong-Gong Lin II. “Must Reads: Here’s how Paradise ignored

warnings and became a deathtrap.” Los Angeles Times. 30 Dec. 2018 3Am PT.

latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html. Access on

23, Feb 2022.