10 English: Bias in the news

Part of a set of resources created for a year 10 English class in Australia (ACARA syllabus). The other resources are also available in my store – Aussie_Resources. A PowerPoint designed for use in a 70 minute lesson.

The lesson begins with a brainstorming activity where students reflect on the news they have seen recently and make a list of people, issues and events. This is a good prompt for a discussion about topical stories.

This is followed by a survey of what category of news e.g. sports, entertainment news, political news etc. It also talks about the frequency of accessing the news and the ways that they engage with the news.

Once students are settled introduce the major focus of the lesson: How do journalists / media companies shape our beliefs about / attitudes towards different people?
The lesson introduces a key term ‘target audience’ and how this determines what specific news organisations report.

Pose the question: Is the news a trustworthy source of information?
Introduce terms for students to add to glossary: bias, empowerment, disempowerment

Learn some ways that bias is omission, exaggeration, selective statistics, evaluative language and biased language choices

Look at some famous people who have been shown positively and negatively in the media (images juxtaposed side by side). Great for discussion

Look at an article (about Britney Spears) and how it creates a certain representation of a her through language choices, who is quoted, the balance between facts and opinions, whose views are silenced (omitted)

After discussing what they have learned, the lesson ends with a definition of ‘hard news’ and ‘soft news’ and a list of news stories for them to classify into these two categories.