Belatedly coming back to this. I would agree that writing an essay is very different to writing an article. The point of an academic essay is to assess the evidence, weigh it all up and present a reasoned conclusion. Most newspaper articles are reflecting a paper's inherent bias - it's often harder to spot it in papers whose world view is broadly aligned with yours.
And there is no question the Mail has an agenda. I typed "Daily Mail nursery" into google just now - I got http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305310/UK-families-face-highest-costs-childcare-Average-weekly-nursery-160.html link on the first page. Now 95% of this story is a fairly evenly presented analysis of an interesting piece of research about childcare costs, which raises lots of valid questions. And then in the middle is the following comment:
"Critics, however, warn that the true cost of the trend towards having both parents out at work is not the financial one, but the emotional and developmental cost for children who grow up without their mother at home."
That is just thrown in there. There is no reference to who these critics are, no evidence to prove that, and no sources cited. It's just lobbed in there. I'm not saying there aren't studies that do say that there are negative impacts on children who attend nursery but that comment has nothing to do with the issue under discussion and is just lazy journalism. Why on earth would you put that in there if you didn't have some form of ideological objection to nurseries? I was so surprised by that I had to read the article three times to check I hadn't missed something.