Blog Post
Same story, differing perspectives: How reporting changes depending on who’s writing the narrative
In an increasingly convoluted landscape of news and media, distinguishing fact from fiction is a significant challenge. Consequently, teaching students media literacy is essential - but how do we do this well?
Today’s teenagers have faced an information overload throughout their whole lives. It’s near impossible to avoid the constant stream of news updates, events, and opinions thanks to the internet. While this does empower young people to stay informed, it has made discerning truth from fiction a crucial, yet challenging, skill.
Because of technology, we are inundated by information. We just don't have time to separate the facts from the falsities. A message can go viral before any serious truth filter has been applied.
Steven Sloman (Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University)
The acceleration and saturation of media is also affecting traditional press. Since print publications can’t compete with social media in the race to break the news, newspapers have increased analytic and perspective journalism, which can include editorials, opinion pieces, and subjective evaluations of news stories. If we are to be a media literate society, we need to grapple with the fact that even reliable sources can present biased, nuanced, and complex versions of the truth.
Bias doesn’t equal misinformation
Bias isn’t a bad word. It’s present in almost all writing because everyone has their own internal biases. While biased writing can be based on fact, either selectively or sensationalised, misinformation is based on inaccuracies. Due to bias, an article can change depending on who’s writing the narrative. Therefore, reading about a news topic from a range of different sources will help the reader gain a clearer perspective. This also allows students to assess their own biases in addition to the writers’.
Why students need this now: escaping the echo-chamber
According to Ofcom, 71% of young people consume news on social media. Social media algorithms often create echo-chambers, where users primarily see content supporting their own beliefs – from both traditionally reputable outlets and less well-known sources.
Students must be equipped with the skills and awareness to recognise biases and misinformation. In addition, analysing bias in a reputable source, where it may be slight, can arm students with a keen eye to filter out extreme views, alongside considering moderate perspectives with nuance.
Many articles I assign for class include writers' subjective interpretations of events [...] my hope is that through our conversations, they can come to see value even in the 'slightly biased'.
Danielle DeRise (Lecturer in the School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication, James Madison University)
How media literacy can support learners
This all falls neatly into media literacy, which focuses on making readers active participants in the messages that they read, instead of passive consumers.
Global awareness brought by access to a variety of news sources, paired with the ability to evaluate it, fosters global citizenship and a deeper understanding of how we receive and process information. This approach aligns with the UN’s pillars of education, particularly ‘learning to know’ and ‘learning to live together’.
Media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyse, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms.
Center for Media Literacy
Practical examples for teaching media literacy
The examples below for teaching use PressReader, a one-stop shop for newspapers, magazines, and comics from around the world. You and your students can access it on the desktop site or via the PressReader app.
The following activities support the teaching of source evaluation and bias detection skills, focusing on how the release of ChatGPT-3 and the rise of AI are reported differently by The Chicago Tribune and The Telegraph. Students should read both articles (available on PressReader) and answer the questions individually or in small groups, referring back to both articles. You could either give them all the questions at once, or one by one, allowing learners to focus on one idea at a time.
Article 2: The Chicago Tribune: “Fears about AI are overblown. ChatGPT is a net gain.”
Activity 1: Evaluating the news
- Who wrote this? Who are the authors? Can they be verified?
- Why was this article written? What is the reason for its existence?
- What is missing? Is this the whole story? What questions aren’t answered?
- Where do I go from here? Where can I find verification of these facts? Where can I find other perspectives on this topic?
- Would everyone take the same message or meaning from this news article? Why or why not?
Activity 2: Detecting and evaluating bias
- Where does this journalism’s funding come from?
- What are the unchallenged assumptions or stereotypes?
- Does this story include loaded language? Does the headline match with the rest of the content?
- Does this story present a false balance between sides of an issue?
- Are the visuals misleading? How do they compare to each other?
- Does this news story influence your thinking in any way? Why or why not?
These activities draw inspiration from PressReader’s Media Literacy Toolkit and FAIR’s Media Literacy Guide.
If you’re interested in further exploring media literacy, here are some convenient resources to use in class: