Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Whether liberal or conservative, everyone complains about bias in the media. Mike Smith talks about how to teach your kids to recognize media bias in today's Home School Heartbeat.

Mike Smith:
In contemporary times, we have no lack of information at our disposal. The news media has certainly taken advantage of today's technological advances, but for all of the benefits, there are an equal number of serious drawbacks. Children need to recognize these flaws if they are going to understand the current events from the proper perspective.


All reporting is bias in one way or another. Everyone is affected by their worldview whether they admit it or not-journalists included! How we communicate with others is affected by our belief system.


But reporting can be objective. Every story has at least two sides to it, and objective reporting seeks to avoid one-sidedness. Select an issue and have your children look at how the differing sides are presented. What experts are interviewed to address the situation? Does the article give equal time to opposing perspectives? Does it look like the story leaves out information that may be relevant? A news article can be spun from a particular perspective by leaving out important information. Often you can say more by what you leave out than what you actually report.


Sometimes writers and editors choose not to report on issues that don't seem important to them. Have your children look at two different news sources on any given day. By cataloguing the differences in the issues covered, you can often get a good idea as to what topics the folks in charge of different media outlets find important. And until next time, I'm Mike Smith.