Fox 9 News

Local News Log:

Fox 9 5 o’clock News

NEWS Stabbing in Rochester- 150sec.
SPORTS Vikings Win against Packers- 120sec.
WEATHER Weather, it’s cold- 65 sec.
ADS COMMERCIALS- 180 sec
NEWS National Transportation Safety Board discusses 35W bridge and the MNDOT Firing 45sec.
NEWS 8 year old confesses to murder- 30 sec
NEWS (INTERNATIONAL) Nuclear Sub testing in Russia- 30 sec
NEWS USS Freedom combat boat- 20 sec
NEWS Lake Superior Fitzgerald shipwreck anniversary- 20 sec
NEWS Obama and the economy- 110 sec
COMMERCIALS- 180 sec
NEWS Unemployment Rate, NY job fair- 15 sec
CONSUMER Economy Cutting back on spending, stretching the dollar, budgets- 50 sec
CONSUMER Snow blowers- 30 sec
WEATHER Snow records across the US 35 sec
WEATHER Weather- 195 sec
NEWS Macy’s Christmas display downtown MPLS- 10 sec
NEWS Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats- 20 sec
COMMERCIALS- 180 sec
SPORTS Viking’s win- 160 sec
SPORTS Chicago/Tennessee- 30 sec
SPORTS Detroit/JAX- 30 sec
ENTERTAINMENT Rubik’s cube tournament- 45 sec

This local news show used “real people” interviews to appeal to the audience. Most people interviewed were younger (didn’t look older than 30), and the news stories were focused on the themes that are concerning the public today (i.e., the economy, President-elect Obama and his plans, the Vikings win against the Packers), and the sensational news (i.e., Murders). The way they edited the section on the woman who was fired from MNDOT for various reasons during the collapse of the 35W bridge was shown sitting alone on a park bench, making her look isolated and cast aside from the department, though she narrowly escaped having to go to jail.

Here is an activity that I came up with to teach critical analysis of the news to my future students:

The purpose of this activity is to enhance the students’ understanding of the news and how different biases and the non-inclusion of certain perspectives can alter the news that the public receives. The first step in this activity is to show the class one the video on news stations and how they distort stories from my first blog post. In this video, a girl’s comment and opinion on the new school uniform policy is edited to match what the big media conglomerations want the comment to sound like. This short clip shows her retaliation against this news station.

Then, I would have the students go online and find two different local news sources and one national news source. Then students are to pick a hot topic or a recent national news event, and read an article, or watch a video from each of those sources on that event. Students will compare and contrast the articles and videos from these different sources and write down the similarities and differences. They will answer the following questions after reading/viewing the articles/videos: What are the differences between sources? What are the similarities? What does each of the sources emphasize? Why do you think there are differences from source to source? How do the local sources differ? How are they the same? How do the local sources differ from the national sources?