This week in English was very eventful. The class was divided in 6 groups. Each group was assigned a specific type of media. The group’s job was to find any sort of political bias in their respective type of media. My group was initially assigned ‘Magazine’. But we traded that with another group who had ‘Internet’. Quite surprisingly that’s what they wanted! It all worked out perfectly. So with regard to our assignment we decided to look at a variety of political websites and tried to find bias in them. So I looked at a lot of network websites like CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ABC News.com, FOX News.com. In terms of international coverage on US politics, I also looked at TIMES OF INDIA.com and INDIA Today.com. Other members of my group looked at other local news websites and blogs. Wednesday we had no class. So we utilized that time in getting together and organizing our strategy on how to carry out the 10 minute presentation in class for Friday. Even on Friday we got together and rehearsed the final presentation. In class, we drew on the board, a ‘spectrum’ of the websites ranking them for being the ‘most liberal’ to the ‘Neutral’ to ‘most conservative’. Each one of us had a chance to talk and explain why a particular website that they looked at, was inclined more towards the right or left. All together we covered a total of 15-20 websites. Our presentation lasted for 25 minutes. Ours was the longest and much more comprehensive in terms of content than others groups they made their presentation after us. Everyone liked our spectrum. It was really cool.
Two other groups went after us. One group did their presentation on ‘Radio’ and the other on ‘Magazine’. The magazine group made a big poster in which they put various types of magazines in 3 categories: Liberal, Neutral and Conservative. They made good use of visual aid. The radio group’s presentation, in terms of content, was good as well. That’s how the lecture on Friday ended. On the whole, it was one of the most exciting days in class. On Monday, the remaining three groups are supposed to make their presentation. I am eager to see what they come up with.
