Critical thinking

How to read newspaper

Independent category of resources is media. In general, we consider serious media to be more credible than tabloids which often bring sensations and exaggerate the reality.

It is important to differentiate between reporting and publicist genres. Reporting is unemotional, brief, accurate and brings information on actual and/or unknown events. Publicist genres look for interconnections, connections, make conclusions and assessments, arguments. Reporting news should inform objectively, while publicist genres can bring the opinions of journalists. Afterwards it is only a choice of a reader to identify or not with the publicity output.

Although press news should be unemotional, often we meet with non-objectivity. Journalists can do it by various tricks. Sometimes they quote two experts with the similar opinion, but do not ask the side with the opposite. By doing that, they consciously (or unconsciously) enforce some opinions as facts and thus they offer only partial information.

If a journalist works with facts without showing their source, critical reader should alert the attention. It does not have to mean that the journalist makes up the facts, but a reader should have the opportunity to verify the information.

Bias in press service can be also traced, for example, in using of inappropriate selection of words. Press service should use neutral language. There should not be used any expressive words as they are emotionally influenced and they can influence the whole tone of an article and thus also of the whole information. Reader can reveal subjectivity of journalist when s/he takes notice of what adjectives or adverbs journalist uses.

Example: