Part one

Post your answers (450 an up words)

This week as you are reading in your text about the news, watch a 1/2 hour local newscast, a 1/2 hour national newscast, and a 1/2 hour of cable news. That’s a total of 90 min of news.

Give the name of each newscast, channel, time and date you watched.

Then proceed to answer each of the following questions about each newscast.

1. Was there a bias or opinion in the reporting or was it strictly factual? Explain and give specific examples.

2. Were there obvious questions a viewer might have about a story that went unanswered?

3. Were any stories sensationalized (media hype)?

4. Did you see any examples of fear tactics being used to entice viewership or scare the viewer unnecessarily? Meaning, the information is not necessarily factual. Think back to the article you read titled “The Media Scares Us and We Like It.”

5. What newscast did you enjoy most (local, national, or cable)?

Just in case you need help knowing the difference between local/national/cable news: local news is something like NBC 7 San Diego. National news is like CBS World News Tonight. Cable news would include FOX News, MSNBC, CNN etc…