Media 101
Media 101
- Journalists decide on stories angles, guests, and experts
-All stories are naturally 'biased', even though they can be faire and balanced
What is opinion journalism?
- someone give their take on the news
- opinion journalism blurs the boundaries between factual reporting and commentary
Experts?
Angle/ editorialization
The way in which a story is presented to the audience
Benefits and limitations
- Benefits: sheds a personal light on a specific issue (racism, poverty, inequalities); suggests actions to help resolve a problem
- Limitations: can mislead the audience, spread fake news or false accusations. Can be used by politicians to reinforce certain claims
Who are the experts invited to speak on certain topics?
- Traditional media: former journalists, experts (profs, analysts), scientists, etc.
- Partisan media: random people with a lot of assertiveness. People working in 'think tanks' give a biased sense of expertise.
Key Strategies for Editorialization
- Anecdotes matter more than underlying issues, social and political patterns, or the economy
- Decontextualization: citations out of context
- Emotionally charged vocabulary: to incite feelings, strong reactions, suggest a connection
- Audiences who lack internet and news literacy cannot always make the difference between fact-based reporting from opinion journalism.
- Not all opinion pieces are labelled 'opinion' (e.g. op-eds, analysis, review, editorial, commentary, column)
- Opinion headlines are often very catchy
Opinion vs News
Opinion:
- promote a single viewpoint
- may use first person ("I", "We")
- more personal tone, including anecdotes.
- labelled as: opinion, editorial, review or analysis
Opinion vs News
News articles:
- promote a variety of viewpoints
- don't advocate for any viewpoint, contains observable & verifiable facts
- usually written in the third person ("they", "them")
- attributes opinions to sources (e.g. "he said", "she explained")