GCCCD Newscast & Journalism Discussion

This week as you are reading in your text about the news, I’d like you to watch a 1/2 hour local newscast, a 1/2 hour national newscast, and a 1/2 hour of cable news. That’s a total of 90 min of news. I’d like you to analyze each newscast.

Please give the name of each newscast, channel, time and date you watched.

Then proceed to answer each of the following questions about each newscast.

1. Was there a bias or opinion in the reporting or was it strictly factual? Explain and give specific examples.

2. Were there obvious questions a viewer might have about a story that went unanswered?

3. Were any stories sensationalized (media hype)?

4. Did you see any examples of fear tactics being used to entice viewership or scare the viewer unnecessarily? Meaning, the information is not necessarily factual. Think back to the article you read titled “The Media Scares Us and We Like It.”

5. What newscast did you enjoy most (local, national, or cable)?

Just in case you need help knowing the difference between local/national/cable news:  local news is something like NBC 7 San Diego. National news is like CBS World News Tonight. Cable news would include FOX News, MSNBC, CNN etc…

part two

Shaping the American Experience

So far in this course we have discussed several huge developments from the time Europeans landed on the American continents till about 1750. In your estimation, what event was the most impactful, whether for good or ill, in the shaping of what would become the American experience