Download Helping Our Students Understand Bias & Propaganda

NEWSCASTS
AND
REPORTS:
Audiences
negotiate
meaning
KEY QUESTION
• What Rhetorical Devices (language
techniques) do persuasive authors and
speakers use to help convince viewers and
readers?
• Rhetorical Devices: language techniques
used to enhance the message of a
speaker and subtly convince the audience.
Critical thinking questions
• Who created/paid for the message?
• For what purpose was it made?
• Who is the ‘target audience’?
• What techniques are used to attract my
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attention & increase believability ?
Who or what might be omitted and why?
What do they want me to think or do?
How do I know what it means?
Where might I go to get more information?
Questions of images & texts:
• What characters, motifs, symbols, products,
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effects, and persuasive devices are used in
this picture?
What values do these elements represent?
What is your interpretation of messages they
are sending?
Who is pictured as a role model? Who is
excluded?
Who is being targeted as an audience?
What are the creators really selling?
What is propaganda?
What is propaganda?
Propaganda is a specific type of
message presentation directly aimed
at influencing the opinions of people,
rather than impartially providing
information.
What is propaganda?
"Propaganda is the deliberate,
systematic attempt to shape
perceptions, manipulate cognitions
[thoughts], and direct behavior to
achieve a response that furthers the
desired intent of the propagandist."
Source: Propaganda and Persuasion, Garth Jowett/Victoria O'Donnell
What is bias?
What is bias?
"Bias is manifest in texts when authors present
particular values as if they were universal. For
example, bias can be conveyed in the media through
the selection of stories, sequence, and slant in
newscasts; the placement or omission of stories in
newspapers; who is interviewed and left out in radio
or television talk shows and news programs; the
advertisements on webpages, television, magazines,
radio shows targeted at specific audiences; the lyrics
of commercial jingles and popular music, and the
images displayed with them in broadcast
commercials and music videos; the goals,
procedures, and the rules of video games.“
Source: December 2002, readingonline.org
BIAS in the NEWS
• Media-Awareness: Bias in the News
• http://www.media-
awareness.ca/english/resources/education
al/lessons/secondary/broadcast_news/bw_
bias_in_the_news_lesson.cfm
Types of Bias
• Bias through selection or omission:
– An editor can express a bias by choosing to use or not to use a
specific news item. Within a given story, some details can be
ignored, and others included, to give readers or viewers a
different opinion about the events reported.
• Bias through placement
– Readers of papers judge first page stories to be more significant
than those buried in the back. Television and radio newscasts
run the most important stories first and leave the less significant
for later.
Types of Bias
• Bias by headline
– Many people read only the headlines of a news item. Most
people scan nearly all the headlines in a newspaper. Headlines
are the most-read part of a paper.
• Bias by photos, captions and camera angles
– On television, the choice of which visual images to display is
extremely important. The captions newspapers run below photos
are also potential sources of bias.
• Bias through use of names and titles
– News media often use labels and titles to describe people, places, and
events. A person can be called an "ex-con" or be referred to as
someone who "served time twenty years ago for a minor offense."
Whether a person is described as a "terrorist" or a "freedom fighter" is
a clear indication of editorial bias.
Types of Bias
• Bias through statistics and crowd
counts
– To make a disaster seem more spectacular (and therefore
worthy of reading about), numbers can be inflated. "A hundred
injured in aircrash" can be the same as "only minor injuries in air
crash," reflecting the opinion of the person doing the counting.
• Bias by source control
– To detect bias, always consider where the news item "comes
from." Is the information supplied by a reporter, an eyewitness,
police or fire officials, executives, or elected or appointed
government officials?
Types of Bias
• Word choice and tone
– Showing the same kind of bias that appears in
headlines, the use of positive or negative words or
words with a particular connotation can strongly
influence the reader or viewer.
• More than 900 people attended the event.
• Fewer than 1,000 people showed up at the
event.
Rhetorical Devices=Word Choice
• Language techniques used to enhance the
message of a speaker and subtly convince
the audience.
• TYPES:
– Repetition
– Rhetorical Questions
– Parallel Structure
– Hyperbole
Types of Rhetorical Devices
• Repetition
– If something happens often enough, I
will eventually be persuaded.
– Advertisements repeated replay
themselves when we see the product.
Repetition creates a pattern, which
consequently and naturally grabs our
attention.
Types of Rhetorical Devices
• Rhetorical Questions
– Gaining agreement: Is the Pope a Catholic?
• These are intended to make the listener agree with
the speaker as the answer is obviously yes.
– Hedging: The question format allows others
to disagree but is not necessarily seeking
argument.
• Isn’t that wonderful? Is it a shade of blue?
– Multiple Questions: Do not give the audience
time/chance to answer.
Types of Rhetorical Devices
• Parallel Structure:
– Swimming, hiking, biking
• Hyperbole: figure of speech that uses an
exaggerated or extravagant statement to
create a strong emotional response.
– They ran like greased lightning.
Examples: What is the bias??
• "Police said the suspect was described as
a black man in his 20s..."
• "Indian Found Murdered in New Town"
• "Detectives are investigating the death of
an Asian employee of a brokerage firm
whose body was found by the company's
owner yesterday...."
Questions to consider:
• What do these news stories have in
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common?
When is race an appropriate element in a
story?
Are the racial identifications used in these
stories relevant? Why or why not?
What are the problems surrounding
unwarranted use of racial identity in crimerelated stories?
Identify the bias:
• Bias by photos, captions
Identify the bias:
• FISHING FOR DONATIONS
House Speaker Denny Hastert led 35
donors last Monday on a predawn
flyfishing excursion in Valley Forge, Pa.
Each donor got a personal guide
from the local Trout Unlimited. Minimum
dontation: $5,000; number of fish caught:
1.
Identify the bias:
• Bias through placement
Identify the bias:
In Bernard Goldberg’s book BIAS, he
accuses CBS News of bias in reporting.
News Sites
• How are these different news sites geared
for different audience:
– http://abcnews.go.com/abcnews4kids/kids/in
dex.html
– http://fyi.cnn.com/fyi/
– http://www.newscurrents.com/intro/index.ht
ml
Newscasts:
• Watch each news report and complete the
Analysis Form
• http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/02/obama-to-
make-statment-tonight-subject-unknown/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u_fWAqu0_4
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42852700/ns/world_
news-death_of_bin_laden/t/us-forces-kill-osamabin-laden-pakistan/#.TlZFZltecrU
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJoEolK8bAg
How do these differ?
• How do the sources differ?
• What is the bias?
• What rhetorical devices are used?
• Imagery, word choice, titles, visuals?