"How the Media Twists the News"

What started out as a joke about a newsmagazine's role in creating trends became, for Sheila Gribben Liaugminas, a serious article that takes on the media.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 12 Unit 4's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: How the Media Twists the News, Why Partisans View, Bush's Address on Iraq Invasion, The Dixie Chicks, Keep the Heat, Chicks Reap Whirlwind, No More Whistlin' Dixie, America Catches Up, Speaking Up and Speaking Out, Esteemed Outlaws, A Tired Old Song
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. apathy
    the trait of lacking enthusiasm for or interest in things
    it's the result of "apathy, preference for the curious trivial as against the dull important, and the hunger for sideshows and three-legged calves."
  2. consequential
    having important effects or results
    Still, there are people who would like to pay attention to the more consequential events and issues that used to be called news.
  3. trivialize
    make insignificant
    These can be hard to discern when politics itself has become trivialized.
  4. substantive
    having a firm basis in reality and therefore important
    Hence the need to become intelligent news consumers: to learn how to pick through massive fields of information for substantive and fair reporting.
  5. impervious
    not admitting of passage or capable of being affected
    For these three CNN personalities, the news media themselves are impervious to the predispositions and prejudice that afflict their audience.
  6. preconceived
    formed beforehand
    Sometimes the editors assigned reporters to a story that had been preconceived in the New York headquarters--a story with a foregone conclusion...
  7. discriminating
    showing or indicating careful judgment and discernment
    Be discriminating in your selection of of news sources and carefully scrutinize everything you hear and read--see how it resonates with what you believe.
  8. compelling
    tending to persuade by forcefulness of argument
    Do their accounts sound slanted, or do they present compelling voices from both sides of an issue?
  9. status quo
    the existing state of affairs
    They had a preconceived idea of the status quo, and so they would always go to the status-quo sources for their standard comments.
  10. distorted
    having an intended meaning altered or misrepresented
    "In Liberty and the News he concluded that the newspaper stories of one of the seminal events of the century (the Russian Revolution) were distorted and inaccurate, based not on the facts but on the 'hopes of the men who composed the news organization.'"
  11. rational
    consistent with or based on or using reason
    How could the public get the information it needed to make rational political judgments if it could not rely on the press?
  12. vigilance
    the process of paying close and continuous attention
    Vigilance and self-awareness are its only protection.
Created on Sat Mar 07 10:55:49 EST 2015 (updated Sat Mar 07 19:09:08 EST 2015)

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