Critical Reading 10
Many of you likely recognize this from our English 101 — but it’s always good practice to check and recheck our personal perspectives and beliefs!
Whether we like it or not, we all have our biases, our own preconceived notions of how the world works, our own judgments, and our own assumptions. Maybe it’s based on morality, or what our friends and family tell us, or just that feeling that something is true.
Sometimes we put a great deal of thought into our biases, other times we just assume they’re true based on what we’ve heard in the background.
Regardless, it’s always good to have confirmation (or even correction)!
For this critical reading, confirm or challenge your own bias by seeking out the most credible source you can find. This could be something you assume is bad or good, a perspective you assume is just, a system you assume works a certain way, etc.
Are social media companies “canceling” those who disrupt the status quo? Is there some connection between video games and violence? How serious is the immigration situation, really? Is sugar that bad for you? Does hunting really help control wildlife populations in a positive way? For these kinds of questions, we all have our gut responses or knee-jerk talking points, but do we really know what we’re talking about?
Here’s your chance to prove it!
And while would recommend avoiding any biased, all of the following things are still valid:
You can still get your personal information where you see fit. Just because a source doesn’t offer objective, unbiased information for your essay doesn’t mean nothing useful can be gleaned from that source (or that it isn’t just entertaining).
Regardless of the source you’re using, be extremely wary of opinion pieces and “news analysis” as opposed to just plain “news”.
What is the “news”? The news is simply the reporting of facts, occurrences, and events to communicate what happened and generally why and how it happened as well as what might happen as a result. Real news stories avoid speculation and instead favor the input from experts and eyewitnesses
What is “news analysis”? Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, Bill Mahr, Trevor Noah, Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, and all the other talking heads.
These individuals (and their programs) are involved with the news, but their role is also to analyze the news to reach conclusions about what they think it means and what you should think it means.
Their job isn’t primarily to report the news, it’s to embellish, scrutinize, and entertain an audience using the news as a conversation piece (though some are more dedicated to informing their audience than others).
Even IF what they’re saying is true, fundamentally their job isn’t to inform you. It’s to keep your attention so that their network makes a profit.
PROMPTS:
1. Cite your source in proper MLA format
2. Summarize the thesis or stance that your source is taking on this issue. How do you know this source is credible, exactly? Provide a quote in proper in-text MLA format to support this summary.
3. Did this source ultimately challenge or confirm your bias? How so? What information or aspect of the source specifically did so, and why? Provide a quote in proper in-text MLA format to support this summary.