Is It Fair?

Duration

30-60 minutes

Topic(s)

Current Events
Journalism

Grade(s)

7-12
College/University

Are your students savvy searchers? Can they spot the difference between a straight news article and an opinion piece? Do they recognize bias in their sources … or in themselves?

You are in one of Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy’s 11 flexible, multimedia lesson plans to tackle these challenges. Eight skill-building lesson plans introduce essential media literacy concepts through engaging explainer videos and colorful infographics that help students revisit, retain and apply the key concepts. The accompanying News or Noise? Media Map provides a collection of examples ready for students to analyze and evaluate with the support of worksheets and discussion prompts. Three reporting lesson plans help students take what they’ve learned and apply it to their own content creation, inspired by the issues that matter to them.

Adapting Fact Finder for Your Classroom

FROM KEY IDEAS TO COMPLETE CURRICULUM

Polish one particular skill or take your students on a comprehensive journey from news novices to media masters. We designed this suite of 11 lesson plans and their corresponding resources to be used either as a complete curriculum or individually. There’s also flexibility within each lesson plan to complete the whole thing or choose individual resources and smaller activities.

Building New Skills and Ideas

Each lesson plan’s format is inspired by the 5-E’s constructivist instructional model (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate). For students new to media literacy or news consumption, the opening “engage” activity along with the explainer video and infographic may be enough to build their awareness of key concepts. More advanced students can put these concepts into action as they navigate the News or Noise? map with the help of worksheets to guide their application. Those who have already developed their media savvy can still be challenged to elaborate by applying the infographic tips and methods to the boundless content available online.

A Cross-Disciplinary, Standards-Driven Toolbox

No matter what subject you teach, bringing elements of media literacy and journalism into your curriculum can benefit your students and help you meet standards, including Common Core requirements for analyzing sources, creating content and using non-print texts. Media literacy empowers students to conduct better research and make better arguments, whether the topic is the Civil War or the biological impact of GMOs.

The challenges today’s media landscape poses for our students — and for all of us — can be daunting. But we hope this collection of content provides an approachable way to help your students hone their ability to find quality content and begin creating their own to share with the world.

— The NewseumED Team

Discuss what your students have heard about fairness — or bias — in the media, and reach a definition of what fairness is. (For example: Fairness is providing all the information that an audience needs to understand and evaluate an event or idea. It means giving serious consideration to all sides of an issue and sharing all the important facts.)
To illustrate what fairness in news coverage might look like and why it matters, distribute the Reporting the Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears handout. Discuss which of the headlines your students think are fair, which are not, and why. Discuss how the different versions might influence their view of the events.
Explain that one way to weigh the fairness of a news story is to look for three things: word choice, context and counterpoints. To understand these concepts, watch the “Is It Fair?” explainer video, then review the accompanying tipsheet graphic.
Look back at the Goldilocks examples and highlight these things:
- Yellow = examples of leading language
- Orange = examples of context that deepens understanding of what happened
- Green = examples of counterpoints showing different perspectives or responses to accusations

Discuss students’ findings as they go to ensure understanding of each concept.

Tell students it’s time to go beyond fairy tales and apply their fairness meters to real news. Distribute the Is It Fair? worksheet and printed examples of a news story from the News or Noise? media map or your own selections. Suggested examples:
- Black Teens Ambivalent About Walkouts, 2018 (1 and 2 of 2)
- Children's Crusade Begins, 1963 (1 and 2 of 2)

Depending on your students’ level and confidence, either work through the worksheet as a class or have them work independently or in small groups.

After students have completed their worksheets, have them share their findings and discuss their process. Then use the Discussion Questions below to continue the conversation.

Which of these three indicators of fairness do you think is the easiest to look for? The most difficult? Why?
Why is it important to weigh the fairness of the content you come across in your daily life? Is this something you already do?
How can you tell the difference between colorful language that helps paint a vivid scene and unfair language that shapes a reader/viewer’s opinion of the story?
What would you tell someone who says it’s too much work to try to weigh whether or not news is fair?
What would you say to someone who says all media is biased?
If a news story is biased, does that mean you should discount all of the information in it? Why or why not? What next steps should you take if you determine something is unfair?

Evaluating Coverage of Current Controversies

As a class, create a list of current controversial topics. Individually or in small groups, students select an event and compare/contrast coverage of it from at least three sources (online media outlets, print newspapers, cable TV shows, etc.). Reports chosen should be from the same day, if possible. Highlight examples of word choice, context and counterpoints. Discuss their findings as a class.