Evaluating The L.A Times by Dale Boyd

Overall Content

The Los Angeles times provides people of the world and the Los Angeles community with the daily news, both global and local, as well as weather and other relevant media. The front page contains some space for advertisements currently taken up by Cadillac. With the credibility of a publication like the L.A Times the accuracy of information would be a top concern throughout the website. The information given is fair and balanced and the author's name and the date and time when each article was published is present. There are links for related sites if they are relevant to the story, as well as related articles. The Intended audience is anyone and everyone that wants to know whats happening in the world around them, more specifically there is a local version of the site for the Los Angeles area.

Compare with Other Resources

The site is very similar to other news sites as they all contend to cover a wide variety of news topics every day. The Website's value among other news sites is its proximity to the Hollywood film market; among its contenders would be the L.A local paper, Variety. The L.A Times covers an expansive amount of news topics from movie reviews to articles on buisness, also it links to different relative media.

Author

The authors are journalists who usually, but not always, have some sort of training or schooling behind them. As a long standing newspaper in America the L.A Times has a reputation for very reputable journalists, while there are other types of writers that contribute to editorials. The site remains professionally objective; however, bias is found in editorials and some blog posts from those authors who write the articles. Owner of the publication, Sam Zell, is also the owner of the Chicago Tribune.

Check the Links

The links lead to more information on the story as well as images and videos. All links are relevant to the subject matter, and more often than not add to the story for those who want to know more.

Lecture 6: Checking Facts and Forms of Bias

Outline:
Homework Review
Evaluate Websites
Forms of Bias
Blog Report 2
Homework


Chapter 5 Review:
With a partner or on your own:
Write a blog post responding to the following questions
Title: Chapter 5: Critical Interpretation, Student Names
Label: Lecture 6, Review
Interaction: Add a comment to another group’s Chapter 5 blog post

20 – 25 minutes

Purpose

• What is this text about?
• What does the author of the text want me to know or think?
• What does the author want me to do?
• Who would read or view this text?

Structures and Features

• What structures and features are used in the text?
• What does the design or style suggest about the text or about the audience of the text?
• What do the images/figures suggest?
• What kind of language is used?
• What do the words suggest?

Power

• Is the text fair?
• Are there people or groups who are seen in a ‘good light’? Are there people or groups who
• are not?
• Whose interests does the text serve?
• Who benefits from the text being read or viewed?

Gaps

• Are there people depicted in the text who are ‘seen’ but ‘not heard’?
• Who is not seen in the text?
• Are there people for whom this text is not intended?
• Does the text leave out or avoid certain ideas or issues?

Checking Sites for Accuracy:
Choose a journalism related website
Using the tips on page 99, evaluate the website for accuracy
Include your findings in a blog post
Title: Evaluating “Name of Website,” Student Name
Label: Lecture 6, accuracy, journalism 2.0, fact-checking


30 minutes

Types of Bias:

• Political bias, including bias in favour of or against a particular political party, candidate, or policy.
• Advertising bias, corporate media depends on advertising revenue for funding. This relationship promotes a bias to please the advertisers.
• Corporate bias, coverage of political campaigns in such a way as to favour or oppose corporate interests, and the reporting of issues to favour the interests of the owners of the news media or its advertisers. Some critics view the financing of news outlets through advertising as an inherent cause of bias.
• Mainstream bias, a tendency to report what everyone else is reporting, and to gather news from a relatively small number of easily available sources.
• Religious bias, including bias in which one religious or nonreligious viewpoint is given preference over others.
• Bias for or against a group based because of their race, gender, age, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.
• Sensationalism, bias in favour of the exceptional over the ordinary, giving the impression that rare events, such as airplane crashes, are more common than common events, such as automobile crashes.

Critical Questions:

1. What is the author's/speaker's socio-political position? With what social, political, or professional groups is the speaker identified?
2. Does the speaker have anything to gain personally from delivering the message?
3. Who is paying for the message? Where does the message appear? What is the bias of the medium? Who stands to gain?
4. What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how were the data gathered, who gathered the data, and are the data being presented fully?
5. How does the speaker present arguments? Is the message one-sided, or does it include alternative points of view? Does the speaker fairly present alternative arguments? Does the speaker ignore obviously conflicting arguments?
6. If the message includes alternative points of view, how are those views characterised? Does the speaker use positive words and images to describe his/her point of view and negative words and images to describe other points of view? Does the speaker ascribe positive motivations to his/her point of view and negative motivations to alternative points of view?

Bias Activity:
Choose an event and locate 3-4 articles in different news sources. For example, if it is a Canadian story choose news sources from various regions of the country, if it is an international issue such as conflict in the Middle East select sources from various sides of the issue.
Some good websites include: www.newseum.org, www.onlinenewspapers.com and www.journalismnet.com/papers/canada.htm (Canadian Newspaper Index)
write a paragraph on whether there is bias in the news and give examples related to the chosen issue to prove your points

Blog Report 2:

Due: March 15th
Title: We Regret the Error, Name Surname
Label: Blog Report 2

Respond, using examples and in an academic tone:

“Journalists are conditioned to fear and avoid mistakes. This helps send the message that accuracy is important. From there, the best course of action is to help mitigate the fear by teaching practices and introducing tools that help prevent factual errors. Fear of mistakes doesn't lead to accuracy. In fact, one of the best ways to learn how to avoid errors is to make them in the first place. A study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition is just the latest piece of research that suggests, as lead author Nate Kornell, an assistant professor of psychology at Williams College told me, that "making errors is the best way to learn information that you want to learn." Perhaps this sounds a bit confusing: fear is good, but also bad; mistakes are bad, but also instructive. That's exactly the point. Teaching accuracy is a multi-faceted process. It's complicated, and in truth it never really ends. You can't learn accuracy the way you learn to add and subtract. It's a process and a combination of learned behaviours, not a matter of memorization or motor memory.” ~ Craig Silverman

Include at least three mistakes made in Canadian newspapers (online versions)
Note the inaccuracy
Example:
“In a story on Page 3-A of Wednesday’s Independent about the Big Brothers Big Sisters’ Trail of Terror haunted house, a reaction to strobe lights should have included the word “freaking.” The word was replaced with asterisks, perhaps causing confusion about what was actually said. The Independent apologizes for this confusion and the impression it left.” — The Grand Island Independent

Homework:
Read Chapter 9
Read a current edition of the Huffington Post (the Feb. 28 or March 1 issue)
Come with a topic for your e-portfolio



Note: Image 1 from Wristwatch Review, Image 2 from Unambiguously Ambidextrous.

Fact Checking, Katie Elliott

I found the article titled "Boy on life-support after tonsil surgery" on CBC.ca/news.

• Both names of Morris Swan Shannacappo and Heidi Graham were spelt correctly and both were given proper titles.


• There was no math, unless you include his age. He is in fact 12 years old today. Which I discovered from a much more detailed article printed by the Winnipeg Free Press BEFORE the CBC article was posted.


• The CBC article says that the boy was rushed back to hospital because he was coughing up blood, but the Winnipeg Free Press adds that he was also suffering from the inability to breath and shortly after arriving at the hospital went into cardiac arrest.

The Winnipeg Free Press Article is much more detailed, and emotional. Plus it contained quotes and pictures (things which the CBC article did not). I find this lack of information, which was obviously available (since the W.F.P. article was published before the CBC one), to be poor work on the behalf of the CBC reporter.

NOTE: Image found at http://images.starcraftmazter.net/4chan/" >