News and ‘News Analysis': Navigating Fact and Opinion in The Times

BY AMANDA CHRISTY BROWN AND KATHERINE SCHULTEN

 JANUARY 17, 2013 3:40 PMJanuary 17, 2013 3:40 pm

Overview | Why is it important to be critical consumers of news media? How do we discern fact from
opinion in The New York Times, and in other news reports? In this lesson, students will become familiar
with the layout of the NYTimes.com home page and learn how news and opinion articles are labeled and
organized for clarity. Then students will carefully consider the difference between fact and opinion and
create guiding questions to help discern between the two when reading a news or opinion piece from
any news source. Finally, they will use their guiding questions to compare two pieces on the same news
event, separating opinion from fact on the sentence level.

Materials | Student journals and access to computers or tablets and the NYTimes.com home page

Warm-Up | Note to teachers: Before class, you may wish to review The Times’s Readers’ Guide to
familiarize yourself with the different kinds of articles students might encounter daily in the paper. Here
is how the guide is introduced:

In its daily news pages, The Times presents both straightforward news coverage and other journalistic
forms that provide additional perspective on events. These special forms — news analysis articles,
columns and others — adhere to standards different from those of the editorial and Op-Ed pages. The
news and editorial departments do not coordinate coverage and maintain a strict separation in staff and
management.

All articles, columns, editorials and contributions in the newspaper are subject to the same requirements
of factual accuracy.

Ask students in pairs or small groups to navigate to The Times’s home page. Tell them they are going to
engage in a scavenger hunt to help them learn about how articles are organized and labeled in the
newspaper:

Post, project or print the following questions to guide the hunt.

1. What article appears in the upper left hand corner of the home page? What kind of article is it?
News or opinion?

2. What article is featured in the middle of the home page, with the picture? Is it news or opinion?

3. What heading do you see in the box on the right hand side of the home page? What can you
assume about the articles whose headlines you see here?

4. Write the headline of the editorial.

5. What Op-Ed pieces do you see in today’s paper?

6. Write the names of the columnists whose work appears in today’s paper.

7. Scroll down the menu on the left hand side of the page. In which section are you sure you’ll see
opinion pieces?
 8. Write down two headlines in the Arts section. Are these news or opinion articles?

9. Write down two headlines from Health. Are these news or opinion articles?

After students have finished their hunt, ask the following questions to debrief this activity and introduce
the theme of the lesson:

 Where in The Times are you most likely to find news stories?

 When you located a news story, how did you know it was news?

 What is the difference between news and “news analysis”? (The Readers’ Guide can help.)

 Where in The Times are you most likely to find opinion pieces? How do you know they are
opinion?

 Can you find a piece in which facts and opinion mingle?

 Is it always clear what’s a fact and what’s an opinion? Why or why not?

 Why is it important to be able to tell the difference between fact and opinion when consuming
news?

Related | In a 2010 piece on the topic of fact and opinion in news headlined, “In an Age of Voices,
Moving Beyond the Facts,” Arthur Brisbane, then The Times’s public editor, writes:

What some call opinion, others call interpretive journalism — a label as opaque as the practice. Call it
what you will, nothing has generated more reader indignation in the past few weeks than when it has
appeared on a news page.

The morphing of news has stuck in some readers’ craw for a long time, and all three of The Times’s
previous public editors dealt with the issue. But I believe the phenomenon is accelerating and has the
potential to redefine the newspaper.

It’s not that editors have decided to abandon the traditional virtues of objective journalism. But the
Times news pages increasingly are home to “voices,” not merely reportage, as editors commission work
bearing the author’s distinctive point of view. And it is happening during the clamor of the Internet age,
when such voices are the only ones that seem to rise above the din.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

1. Why do you think readers are “indignant” when “interpretive journalism” appears on a news
page?

2. Why, according to Mr. Brisbane, is the phenomenon accelerating and why does it have “the
potential to redefine the newspaper”?

3. Why does Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at
Arizona State University, think “the whole effort to demonstrate impartiality is wrongheaded to
begin with”?

4. In your opinion, which of the two choices presented at the end should The Times take? Why?
RELATED RESOURCES

FROM THE LEARNING NETWORK

 New Feature: Test Yourself, Critical Thinking

 Lesson: When the News Is the News

 Lesson: Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text

FROM NYTIMES.COM

 Readers’ Guide

 The Real Loser: Truth

 Obama Is an Avid Reader, and Critic, of News Coverage

AROUND THE WEB

 HSJ.org’s News Literacy Resources

 Media Literacy 101: Power to the People

 Think Like a Journalist – A News Media Guide from NewsTrust

Activity | From here, students should begin to look at reporting and opinion pieces in The Times to
analyze them for their mix of fact and opinion on the sentence level.

One way to do this is to choose two pieces about the same big news event — one a factual news report
and the other an interpretive news analysis — and compare them.

For example, you might choose the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 and look at both the news article
from May 1, 2011, “Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says,” as well as the news analysis from May 2,
2011, “President’s Vow Fulfilled.”

Here are the opening sentences of each piece. You might read them aloud and ask students which is the
straight news report and which is the news analysis piece:

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and
the most hunted man in the world, was killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan,
President Obama announced on Sunday.

and

President Obama’s announcement late Sunday that Osama bin Laden had been killed delivered not only a
long-awaited prize to the United States, but also a significant victory for Mr. Obama, whose foreign
policy has been the subject of persistent criticism by his rivals.

After this, you might group students in threes or fours to discuss any recent Op-Ed or column in The
Times. Recent pieces with teen appeal include Frank Bruni’s Op-Ed column “How to Choose a
College,” the editorial “Dreaming and Driving,” a selection from Room for Debate’s “With Children,
When Does Religion Go Too Far” and (with teacher preview for content) “After Being Raped, I Was
Wounded – My Honor Wasn’t.”

Ask students to first read the selected article on their own, labeling each sentence as “F” for fact or “O”
for opinion. Then in their small groups, ask them to compare their labels. Encourage them to think
critically as they come to conclusions, considering sources and their reliability, writers’ potential biases,
and their own biases. As they read, ask students to take notes about the reasons and process they used
to distinguish fact from opinion in the article.

Once groups have finished their work, project the article for all to see and talk through students’
decisions at the sentence level. As a class, create a list of guiding questions to ask when reading any
article – news, opinion or a mix – to help differentiate fact from opinion.

Then ask students to choose their own article and read it to test the effectiveness of their guiding
questions. As with the earlier group task, ask students to focus on distinguishing between fact and
opinion on the sentence level, labeling each sentence with an “O” or an “F.”

After their work is complete, reconvene as a class and discuss the efficacy of the guiding questions. Did
they work? Were you always able to tell the difference between fact and opinion? Why or why not?
What’s difficult about this? What might be changed to make the questions more effective? Why is it
important to have such questions in your “reader’s toolbox” as you approach any news media source?

Going Further |

Extend this lesson by discussing the role of fact-checkers and introducing them to John D’Agata and Jim
Fingal’s “Lifespan of a Fact.”

While students read the entire work, Times coverage of the book, including this magazine
feature and this review offer fodder for discussion about the nature of truth in nonfiction. What makes a
fact, a fact? Is factual accuracy the same as truth? Do facts matter? Do they always matter? Why or why
not?

You might also ask students to consider the role and effectiveness of fact-checkers in the 2012
presidential election and the role The Times played in live fact-checking the debates.

Common Core ELA Anchor Standards, 6-12:

Reading:
1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite
specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative,
and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions
6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the
reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.
Writing
2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly
and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate
to task, purpose, and audience.
5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach.

Speaking and Listening:

1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse
partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually,
quantitatively, and orally.
3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.
4. Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of
reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Language:

1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or
speaking.