Using the Media Checklist to Write a Critique (This is pages 15-17 of online Lesson 3)

Using the Media Checklist to Write a Critique (This is pages 15-17 of online Lesson 3)

The media checklist in Chapter 3 should help you focus your attention on assessing the information content of news reports. It’s useful to work through a news report using the checklist as a reminder of what to look for, but you should appreciate its limitations. Here are some important notes about using the checklist to write a critique of a news report, followed by an example of its use.

Identifying Weaknesses in the News Report

1. The questions accompanying the checklist are not exhaustive. It’s a good idea, when writing your first few critiques, to go back to the full treatment of the media checklist item in the text in order to review it thoroughly.

2. You do not need to comment on every item of the checklist unless the news report you are critiquing exhibits every problem on the list. Rather, you should use the checklist as a guide in writing out rough notes that you will later use to[unique_solution]

develop full critiques of news reports. It’s not impossible that a single news report supports from nearly every flaw on the media checklist, but it’s very unlikely

3. Impression: (Not on checklist.) Noting the impression conveyed and then

asking yourself how that impression was conveyed may help lead you to criticisms of the news report. Remember that the question is what impression is conveyed by the report, not what impression you have of the news report or the reporter. It’s something like a “first impression” of events, not what you conclude after a careful reading.

4. Assumptions: (item 7) You might find it helpful to think about what occasioned the news report. Why is it being reported, and why now, or at the time it was reported? Did it originate with a press release? A government report? A court case? An article in a journal (e.g., a medical journal, a science journal)? (Sometimes, what occasioned the report won’t be evident.) You might come up with questions about the assumptions that underlie the reporting of the event by asking these questions.

5. Problems with balance, sources, background (checklist items 4, 5 and 6), and missing connections (a related item not given a separate heading on the checklist) are all cases of topical incompleteness.

6. Perhaps the best test of whether you have accurately identified a weakness in a news report will be your ability to defend your criticism. Following are some tips for defending your criticisms.

Support for your Criticisms

7. When you make a criticism, it’s essential to adequately support that particular criticism. Making the criticism places the “burden of proof” on you to support it. Try to defend one criticism at a time. Developing each criticism as a separate paragraph may help.Not any old reasons will do; to support your criticisms, you need to provide relevant and sufficient reasoning. Here are some suggestions for supporting particular criticisms:

8. Limited sources: To support your claim that a news report has limited sources, you should briefly explain who the sources are, and then say what other sources should have been included and why. (You don’t have to know names!)

9. Lack of balance: To support your claim that a news report lacks balance, you should explain what creates imbalance (sometimes it’s limited sources, but it could also be an emphasis on one point of view and an under-emphasis of another) and what might have solved the problem.

10. Missing background: To support your claim that the report suffers from missing background (topical incompleteness) you should explain what sort of background information is needed. Referring to lack of research, statistics, facts, etc. is too general.

11. Language: To support your claim that the report suffers from problems with language you need to indicate the word(s) or phrase(s) that are problematic, explain why they are problematic, as well as provide a more suitable alternative word (phrase). If you can’t think of another way of expressing it, then perhaps there isn’t a problem.

12. Bias: Bias can exhibit itself in a variety of ways. But it’s not the same as lack of Lack of balance has to do with fair representation of the various parties in a dispute. Lack of balance might be caused by bias, but it’s not the same as bias. Defending a claim that a news report is biased is difficult. A report may lack balance because it was edited unevenly due to space considerations; it may have a misleading headline because the headline writer didn’t read the report in full, or didn’t read it carefully; it may lack background because several paragraphs have been cut by the editor. So defending a charge that a report may be biased involves showing that many of these features are present.

Presenting Your Critique

13. The best way to structure your critique is not usually by following the order in which the checklist items appear. Instead, begin by stating the impression conveyed by the report, then structure your critique so that the most serious problem with the news report is featured first, with less serious problems following.

14. The best critiques indicate which weaknesses in the reporting are most serious.

15. Your critique should state explicitly the “name” of the problem (e.g. lack of balance, missing sources, misleading headline, etc.).