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Videotape the first ten minutes
of a television news broadcasts from two or more local stations
or from the CTV and CBC national broadcasts.
Let the students watch them
in class and ask them to compare what each newscast did differently.
Here are some questions to consider in the class discussion,
depending on the age of your students and their level of media
awareness:
- Ask a couple of students
to make a list of the stories that appeared in each newscast
on the enclosed worksheet.
Do you see the same stories on each list? Are there major differences?
- Look at the order in which
stories were read, keeping in mind that more important stories
are usually read first. What did each station feature as its
top story? Was it the same?
- How long did the stories
run? Ask one of your students to time the stories with a stop-watch
or the classroom clock. Did some stories last for 25 seconds
while others ran for three minutes? Ask your students to discuss
why they think some stories get more air time than others.
- Look at the stories that
were featured on the newscast. Is there one type of story that
comes up more often than others? Crime, politics, business, human
interest stories? Ask your students what they think of these
choices? Are they interested in the stories? Would they rather
see stories about other subjects?
- Ask your students to keep
track of the type of people who are featured in news stories.
Are they mostly politicians, officials, celebrities, and other
well-known people? Do regular citizens make it into the news
very often? If they do, how and when do they appear? What about
women? People of various ethnic backgrounds? Disabled people?
- Encourage your students to
act as the producer of a newscast. How would they organize the
newscast? What's their top story? What would they cut out? Is
there a story they would add?
- At the end of your discussion,
ask your students to decide which newscast best reflects what
was going on in their community or the country on that day. Hold
a vote!
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