Many people accuse FOX news of having a conservative bias, and The Daily Show of having a liberal bias (you could also substitute MSNBC on the liberal side). Working in the computer lab, students will search foxnews.com for "George Bush" and try to find an a story that shows FOX News being critical of President Bush. Then searching dailyshow.com for "Obama" students will find an example of John Stewart being critical of President Obama. How are their criticisms similar? How are they different? Even when they are being critical, do you detect any bias? Is it a harsh criticism or do they go easy on "their" president? How can you tell? In what ways (if any) are humor, sarcasm or irony used? How does each broadcast use headlines and graphics? Is bias detected regarding the way the printed word is used in the piece?
Students will present their findings to the class (and time permitting, will show brief clips of their examples).
We will tally the results to try to determine which source appears more biased of "their" supposed president of choice.
Rationale: This activity will give students the opportunity to do their own multi-media research into the commonly discussed idea of a politically biased media and then come to their own conclusions, rather than simply repeating an established party stance. Doing this kind of online, video research (as opposed to using only traditional print sources) helps students to deal with the kinds of informational sources that they are likely to encounter in the real world. By analyzing these stories, students will gain experience in evaluating messages in order to make informed political decisions.
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