I'm posting the second part of tomorrow's assignment now and hoping that I can track down a broadcast to watch before midnight tomorrow.  I'm at a family reunion in northern Minnesota and finding a television at the right time to watch a broadcast has proved to be something of a challenge.  Funny that I'm having no problem finding a Wi Fi connection but can't seem to track down a way to watch the 5:00 news!

Part II--Activity for teaching critical analysis of news

 

            Unlike film techniques or media types/phenomenon, this is one area where I feel like I have done some worthwhile things in my classroom.  Here is an activity that I have done in the past that I enjoy, students seem to like, and that sparks some interesting conversations. 

 

Here’s what I do before class:

            I comb through the issues from the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune for the same day (ideally the day before class).  I collect as many stories of as many different types as I can: International/National News, Local News, Features, Sports, Weather, etc.  I summarize each in a brief paragraph, trying to keep all of the paragraphs about the same length.  I put these paragraphs on 3X5 index cards so students can flip through them easily.

 

Here’s what happens in class:

 

·      I split students up into groups of 3-5.  They are responsible for putting together a 22 minute news broadcast (leaving eight minutes for commercials).  They need to sift through the index cards I have given them and make the following decisions:

            --Which stories will you cover (they will have too many to cover them all)?

--How much time will you spend on each?  (no story can be shorter than 15 seconds, but no story can be longer than 2.5 minutes.

--What order will you present the stories in?

--When will you break for commercials?

 

 

·      Groups make these decisions and then plan their news broadcast on a large piece of tag board (list the story using a “headline” and the length of time as well as the commercials)

·      Groups then pitch the broadcasts to the class.  They should view this more as presenting a plan for a broadcast to producers rather than presenting the actual broadcast to viewers.

 

·      After each group has presented, groups reconvene and discuss the following questions:

 

o   How did you decide what to cover and what not to cover?

o   How did your broadcast look/feel similar or different to other groups’?

o   If you were a viewer of your own broadcast, would you have a legitimate picture of the news?  What would be missing?  What about if you were a viewer of another group’s broadcast?

·      Then, as a class, we discuss those questions as well as other issues such as:

o   What do we consider newsworthy enough to cover? Why did we make similar or different choices?

o   Did you make choices based on the content of the story or the desires of the audience to have news broadcasts be entertaining?

o   What influence do the people who choose which stories will be covered (or won’t be covered) have over the worldview of viewers?

o   What are the benefits of getting news in 22 minute formats?  What are the drawbacks? 

o   Did you notice biases creeping into your decision making process?  Could you see how bias might creep into other people’s decision making process?

 

Other issues always come up, but the most important thing I think this activity does is to reinforce the idea that those who tell the stories control a culture.  Viewing producers of news broadcasts as the gatekeepers of information is often a new idea to students who have generally accepted the idea that what’s news is news and who ignore the fact that someone has decided what we viewers get to see and hear.  I often use this as an activity that precedes a detailed viewing of a news broadcast (similar to the activity we were assigned).  After they have made decisions about how to structure a broadcast, they often key into things in other broadcasts that they may have missed.