news activity.

There will be an analysis of a news broadcast in the next few weeks, whenever I get to a television...

This activity is meant to be done over 2-3 days in small pieces. To be honest, I feel it's a good "pre-reading" activity in order to start an entire unit on media bias/marketing, and as such kept that in mind as a larger focus when writing this.


If it bleeds, it leads

Start with an introductory poll, either informally through class discussion, or in a written form (recommended) via entrance ticket - do you watch the news? Why or why not? If you do watch a news broadcast, do you choose a specific one regularly and is it for the news broadcast itself? If you don't, what is your reasoning?

From here, break the students into groups of 3-4 with an even mix of yes/no's between each group. Ask them to discuss/argue their reasoning on either side.
--- Example: Jeff watches the 10pm news on NBC solely because it's a lead-in to a show he does like. Amy watches the same NBC broadcast every night because she feels the show possesses a lack of bias and turns the tv off right after. By contrast, Jennifer doesn't watch anything because they don't spend enough time on what she's interested in. She instead looks at a few websites every day or so.

Assign each group two networks. Each group will view and make notes on the two broadcasts, comparing the two to see what each network does: do they devote similar times to the same issues? does one network broadcast seem to report a candidate (if applicable) that the other does not? The groups will pay particular attention to the lead-in hype (can be commercials pre-show or the first few sentences of the broadcast). What do these networks report on first?

Compare these two broadcasts deepy: do they follow a similar format/time structure? What is that leading story? Students will often find that the lead story is one of two or three things: corruption in police, local violent crime, or local dangerous weather patterns.

Pulling back into a large group, students will then all compare notes to develop a consensus between all networks: what does it mean when they open, and spend most of their time on, stories designed to scare?