As a begging, borrowing and stealing teacher, I would do something very similar to this assignment for my own students. I would like to get students to think critically about the news and by that I would like to first inform them of critical perspectives and lenses. Perhaps this would be a perfect time to have introduced the feminist lens, the Marxist lens or a radical lens (socialist, democratic, etc.). After you have gone over these lenses you could then watch a broadcast as a class and have them write as they view and even pause to give them time to write their thoughts.
I would ask the students to think critically about the news and how it is being delivered. Who is giving the news? Who is not giving the news? What are the top stories? What stories (might you know about) are they choosing to not cover? Who is represented? Who is left out? What do they focus on? What is their vocabulary? How do anchors react to different stories? Why do you think that is? The whole focus of this would be for students to understand how the news is constructed and what audience the broadcasters are aiming for. It would also be intriguing to watch news casts on different channels (MTV, BET, CBS, NBC) and look into how they differ and why we think that is.
Joseph, your questions about whether you learned anything as a result of watching the news were the same ones I considered. I was amazed to find that I had not learned much from the newscast even though it looked like a whole bunch of information was presented. It would be neat to poll students after they watch a newscast to see if they think that they were changed in any way or learned anything from the news.
ReplyDeleteI also really like your idea of asking students to apply different lenses as a means to critically analyze a news broadcast. That could really help answer questions about who is reporting and who is not, who/what is being reported and what is left out, etc. What a cool way to teach critical analysis of news!
Joe, haven't we been told time and again that teachers are the best thieves? That being said, I think you're taking the example we were given to the next step. It's a great idea to have the students view the news through a certain lens, especially one like Marxist which is sometimes hard to explain/see in literature. The questions you ask are intriguing and would generate a lot of good discussion (especially because the kids wouldn't have a chance to complain about reading).
ReplyDeleteHey Joe,
ReplyDeleteCongrats on being the Blog of the Day; too bad there's no trophy for this one!
Like Anna and Stephanie said, I really like your idea of using the critical lenses to examine the news. It seems like a very engaging way to get students thinking about these ideas. Beach says that one of the things that constitutes "news" is a "community impact" (90), when one looks at the demographics of the state (Roughly 40% of the residents are not white)...why doesn't the news reflect this? Are they "less valuable" members of the community? Who is the show's audience? Why might they be targeting a white audience? What message might this send to minority communities?
Joe-
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analysis of the news, and I too, after having watched said news, am perhaps less informed. On a note of sympathy for the local news, the entire concept is kind of ridiculous unless news is used as a method of improving communities. So, I don't think we all really need to know about how there was a dog that saved a chicken from drowning in Wayzata (this is hypothetical), but perhaps we do need to know about food shortages at local shelters and how we can help eliminate them. Unfortunately, since many people only get their news from these people (which probably explains why George Bush was elected to two terms in regards to your other post), the news stations have to cover both national and international stories as well. This is incredibly difficult to do well. You are definitely on to something with the use of critical lenses to examine news sources- you could even expand it to have them analyze various words and see if some of them contributed more or less to establishing a certain viewpoint. Cheers on the blog of the day.