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Originally Posted by Schneed10
That's one of the things that drives me most crazy - in high school English class we spent a fair amount of time on the various roles within journalism, namely how to tell the difference between news reporting and opinion pieces. In the mid 90s that was viewed mostly through the lens of print journalism.
But I now feel like it's very easy to look at cable news networks through the same lens and identify which programs are reporting news and which are opinion based.
It seems far, far too many Americans can't tell the difference, and they actually rely on opinion programs for their actual news. Consequently they don't realize that consuming news this way inherently leads to the development of bias in their own minds. They consume news with a confirmation bias and they don't even realize it.
Every American should know that to get your news, you should be consuming it through fact based news reporting programs and written pieces. Never through opinion pieces.
You can supplement with opinion programs once you're up on the facts, but it should not be the source for keeping up with current events and facts. You're never going to be presented with a fair and complete evaluation of the situation this way.
We should all know this but for some reason we don't. Or we don't care.
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I actually remember in both High School AND College in English and Literature , that there was a clear progression from reading-writing-to critical thinking and analysis. Do they teach this anymore?
I took a higher level literature/critical thinking college which was required to satisfy a course....it was taught by a wife of a guy who was on a Washington dc weekly tv politics show. We looked a social issues and read editorial/opinion/analysis pieces by authors such as Chomsky (left) and Krauthammer (right) about each. Our job in the course was to analyze the arguments and then at the techniques each author used to make their arguments. It was eye opening and a gateway to objectivity. We weren't having arguments about the issues but the instruments...and putting aside subjective "FEELINGS", everyone seemed to agree with points made by every author or view point. I think it was one of the few course with extremely high attendance and everyone enjoyed it.
If you just read through social media, critical thinking seems not to be a part of today society.