Media Are Constructions
Assign one of the five “What should be the media policy about identifying a person’s faith in their reporting?” articles so that each student reads only one of the articles and have students answer questions. Click on the link below to be directed to the provided articles.
Take up questions as a class and compare the five pieces:
- What did the different articles have in common?
- What were the key principles each author suggested were most important in deciding whether or not to give a person’s faith in a news article?
- Can students think of any examples of news stories (particularly those relating to crime or violence) where a person’s faith was stated or implied? (Rev. Ray Innen Parchelo’s article has an example of how a news story may imply a person’s faith without stating it outright.)
- Do students think the identification was justified?
- Can they think of examples in which a person’s race, ability, sexual orientation or Aboriginal status was identified or implied? Do they think the identification was justified in those cases?
Discussion note:
Consider engaging students in discussion using strategies such as Socratic method, fishbowl discussions, or jigsaw strategy.
Keeping in mind the points brought up in the previous discussion, ask students for their opinion:
- In what situations is it appropriate to identify an individual’s religion in the news?
- Can this lead to a misperception of a particular religion in the media?
- If a suspect’s religion is mentioned in reporting a crime, can this lead to negative stereotyping of that religion?
- How does the answer change when dealing with other forms of diversity (ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability)? Why?