About this Assignment
Bias has a distorting effect on how facts are presented and interpreted by different audiences. National news networks must make decisions about what stories to run, how to present what happened, and what order to tell those stories in. Bias can be a powerful factor in how the news is reported. Your paper should be at least 2500 words.
Prompt
Select two national news shows from the United States (do not use local news shows) that air on the same day from two different major networks (from networks such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc. Do not choose local news shows). Note the similarities and differences between each network in terms of which stories both networks report, which stories are covered by one and not the other, and what differences there are in the stories they choose to report.
- Summarize the stories and the way they were reported including a note of body language, word usage, and omissions.
- Explore the historical issues of bias in both news sources and how that might affect coverage.
- Discuss how viewers only watching one of these sources might get a different sense of current events than one watching the other.
- Discuss what steps each source could take to reduce their bias.
Related Lessons
- Applying the Principle of Rational Acceptance
- Evaluating Sources for Reliability, Credibility, and Worth
- Media Bias & Criticism: Definition, Types & Examples
- Recognizing Biases, Assumptions & Stereotypes in Written Works
Formatting & Sources
Please write your paper in APA format. You may refer to the course material for supporting evidence, but you must also use at least 3 sources and cite them using APA format. Please include a mix of both primary and secondary sources, with at least one source from a scholarly peer-reviewed journal. If you use any Study.com lessons as sources, please also cite them in APA (including the lesson title and instructor’s name).
- Primary sources are first-hand accounts such as interviews, advertisements, speeches, company documents, statements, and press releases published by the company in question.
- Secondary sources come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, such as Computing Edge. You may use sources like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and IEEE.org to find articles from these journals. Secondary sources may also come from reputable websites with .gov, .edu, or .org in the domain. (Wikipedia is not a reputable source, though the sources listed in Wikipedia articles may be acceptable.)