Best practices in health and science journalism
The following best practices guide journalists in navigating the pitfalls of exaggeration, inadequate vetting and biased framing inherent in modern news production.
Beyond Media Messages: Media Portrayal of Global Development
In this three-day unit, students assess media coverage of natural disasters and their aftermath. Students explore how sensationalism plays a role in determining what is newsworthy, and how that can distort our perception of issues in developing nations.
Common tropes in crime news
Crime news employs specific narrative frameworks to simplify complex issues, often resulting in biased and stigmatizing portrayals.
The Environment Canada hoax: a news story that's full of hot air
If anyone still doubts that youth need to learn how to evaluate online information, those doubts should have been dispelled by a recent hoax perpetrated by the group called the Yes Men. This group, which has a history of staging fake press conferences, decided to draw attention to Canada's position at the Copenhagen conference on climate change by creating a number of fake Web sites purporting to be, among others, the Copenhagen summit site, the Wall Street Journal, and Environment Canada's site. While it didn't take long for Environment Canada to make a statement exposing the hoax, by that time many journalists had reported the story as fact and the story had been widely distributed by wire services.
Perceptions of Youth and Crime
In this lesson students develop an awareness of the ways in which public perceptions regarding young people have been affected by media portrayals of youth violence and youth crime.