Critical News Analysis

Local TV Format:

I watched the Fox 9 News at 9:00 p.m. tonight. The first story that was shown was the Border Battle football game between the Minnesota Vikings and Wisconsin Green Bay Packers. This was a sports story and lasted approximately three minutes and twenty seconds. The next story was about a domestic situation in Dodge County where the mother, son, two daughters, and father had been stabbed. The mother and son had died; this story was about crime and last about two minutes. The next story was about young couples that were hit by a criminal after being chased by police. The couple was hit from behind while at their car. The couple are still both in wheelchairs and this story last about two minutes and fifteen seconds. Another story after this was about a sex predator at Lake Harriet who has been grabbing and exposing himself to women. This story was a minute and twenty seconds long.
The next story was much longer and had any sub stories. It was about unnecessary healthcare. They gave a story of a man who had back surgery and then woke up after surgery blind. This story dealt with many other issues such as the politics of healthcare and how much doctors get paid. After this long story there was a commercial break and then three really short stories about the hurricane in Cuba, the school collapse in Haiti and the space ship with the Minnesotan woman.

Activity for Teaching Critical Analysis of News

As a teacher, I think I would do a few different activities to help my students better understand the news and it’s biases. First I would have my students compare different news channels, like we did for this assignment, and see what differences this noticed such as the news anchors, language, story selection, visual images and so forth. I would have them compare and see if one favored more stories or if there was a variety. After we have discussed this I would have them then look at newspapers and do the same thing. I also think it would be a good idea to have the students do news comparisons at all levels of news starting from local news such as channel fox nine here in the twin cities, to country-level news like CNN and Fox News, and then at an international level of comparing our CNN news to the BBC news or the French news.
I would also have them analyze different types of news such as political news, sports news, cultural news and etc. It is important students note language, story selection and the visual images represented in each newscast. I would also try to explain to my students about corporate influences and who owns what news channels and how that can potentially impact what is shown on those channels. Online news and blogs are becoming more and more popular so it would be important to explain blogs and the difference between opinions and news and facts. Also, on a sub-topic when dealing with news on where the newscast received their facts from. Researching the research that is being presented. Many of the medical and other studies are blown out of proportion and need to be more closely analyzed.