Practicing academic vocabulary
(perhaps also consequence phrases, and real and unreal conditionals)
In their discussion exercise 3 on academic words, Warwick and Rogers (2018, pp. 108) invite us to practice the language by sharing our ideas on the two questions there.
In the explanations and examples we use, the grammar of real and unreal conditionals might also be useful.
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The question
- Why do you think news outlets often seem to distort the real findings of scientific research? Examples, real or imagined, are likely to help your readers.
You have 12:00 minutes to plan and write a response to this question. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
- planning = 3:00 minutes
- writing = 7:00 minutes
- editing = 2:00 minutes.
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A useful strategy - as usual
Imagine you are writing for someone who has not read the question you are discussing. Your aim is to clearly communicate your response to that reader, so it might help to paraphrase the chosen question at the start of your response to it.
This is also a useful strategy in exams such as IELTS and TOEFL, where it's important that your independent writing response makes sense independently of the question to which it must respond.
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Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
As My understanding, nowadays the journal outlets are less morality than before, because they see the news as the money, if many audiences love it, they will get more paid. Especially Thailand that people love something dramatic, those outlets have to extended, putting some emotion in or even worse, the bias, many news outlets has a side, and have no hesitation to write something to attack the others, which sometimes will distort the reality of research in order to get more views
ReplyDeleteHi Poom, I agree with you that somebody writes news articles as they want to attract many audiences so that they can make money. I have had bad experience on reading online news articles via Line Application. There are lot of stupid news articles about Thai celebrities who some times have got a new big house or some times have a luxury vacation in Phuket. I think the kind of news articles isn't educational. I mean the more I read the more I become stupid. However, they have been producing the kind of news articles because they know that Thai people love reading and watching and interested in celebrities' life. When the Thai audiences check and read the news articles, they can post online ad that relates to the topics and advertise they products and services. I wish that Thai journalists and people who work in this field write many quality news articles such The New York Time for us to read.
DeleteIn the BBC News today, which I noticed was repeated in the Bangkok Post, was a report on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This report, agreed on by 190+ nations paints a gloomy picture. But I noticed that the news report, after starting with the factual statements of the scientists, soon made very dire predictions of the disaster coming soon to our planet. They probably weren't telling outright lies, but it seemed likely that they were distorting what was in the scientific paper.
ReplyDeleteI think news outlets, even respectable ones like the BBC News (or it might have been the Bangkok Post that was most guilty of distortion) do this because they want to attract readers, and some distortion can catch readers' or listeners' attention very well. Had the report used the language of the scientists and been impartial, it might not have been so eagerly read or reposted to FB.
Another reason that scientific research might be distorted by news media is for political reasons. This seems to have been the case with some research related to Covid. The one that comes to mind is theory that Covid escaped from a Chinese laboratory after scientists had made it more dangerous in their experiments. Citing research that suggested that it could have evolved in nature, many news outlets gave a distorted account of what the scientists had said because they wanted to discredit US President Donald Trump. I'm no fan of Trump, but in this case, I think the media irresponsibly distorted what the science had really said. In fact, I think some news outlets went beyond being inaccurate to actually lying, or at least being very reckless with the truth.
I just checked, the Bangkok Post's "Acceleration of global warming 'code red' for humanity" (August 10, 2021) is an AFP (Agence France-Presse) article.
DeleteSome news outlets may present their news based on their sponsors and audiences' preferences, regardless of real findings of researches. The truth being more important than revenue might not be the case for them. They, for example, encourage people to buy some harmful cosmetics without taking customers' safety into account because they receive money from sponsors.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that news outlets often present the news according to the preference of their sponsors. In recent years, the preference is even based on political position of the owners or sponsors.
DeleteI think news outlets often seem to distort the real findings of research because some findings are not the information which is not easy to understand and believe in. For example, if your society believes that upbringing can influence criminal behavior and scientific research finds that is not true. There will be lots of doubt with this research.
ReplyDeleteAs I said during class, I liked Att's idea that news outlets sometimes distort the findings of scientific research because they are not "easy to ... believe in." Actually, I'm not sure if Att meant what I thought of, but it's an idea I had not thought of that seems to me important.
DeleteThe example that came to mind was Charles Darwin's findings that have become known as the theory of evolution, the foundation of modern biology. When it was published, Darwin's discoveries were seriously distorted my the newspapers of the day (about the only news outlets that existed in 1859) to misrepresent what he had actually said. There were a lot of cartoons and opinion pieces saying that Darwin said humans were descended from monkeys, which he did not say. What he did say is actually far more shocking, but perhaps the religious opponents just could not believe Darwin's real finding that we are related to every other species on Earth, from chimpanzees and monkeys, from which we not descended, to fish, roses, carrots, yeast and bacteria. Even today, some news outlets, and "science teachers" in some countries can't believe what Darwin discovered so they distort it to make it seem silly or irrational, when it is supremely rational and sensible.
When I was writing my idea, I was thinking of society’s beliefs such as holy things which happen and people cannot find what is causing it. Then people think it happens from supernatural powers and they worship it. Though there is scientific evidence why it happens, some news outlets and businessmen still distort this finding.
DeleteWhy do you think news outlets often seem to distort the real findings of scientific research? Scientific research is too complicate to understand or read so many journalist use it as a resource the write a story. Many journalists interpret it on they own or on they understanding so there are often misinterpret or distort the original information. However, there are some journalist that tend to change the point or the detail of the event just for better sale in the media. Had moral been taken into account, the media's philosophy may be an issue that public keep an eye on.
ReplyDeleteIt is widely discuss that some news agencies seem to distort the findings of scientific research. This may result from the interest between the news agencies and their sponsors. For example, the news agency may report limited coverage on the current environmental issues produced from specific factory because this factory make a product that fund the air time of the channel. Those activists who lead attention of public to the issues seem to get sued from the owner of the factory as well.
ReplyDeleteDo news outlets often seem to distort the real findings of scientific research? I think they do. In my experience, I have seen news articles that overstated good benefits and bad benefits of some diets and medicines by citing statistics that misloaded people. A good example is COVID-19 vaccines from different producers. In news articles, they used to statistics from case studies to claim that which vaccines had good or bad effected on people. It sounded unclear because some studies showed good potential and some studies showed bad side effects on the same vaccines. Who I can trust?
ReplyDeleteHi Emma, your comment makes me think of the current situation in Thailand a lot. These days many still consuming distorted news from some media and televisions, especially for people who do not think carefully and be realistic before believing the vaccine news. That might be a matter of profit to exaggerate the announcement. Recently, many people close to me have developed vaccination allergies and died after a few hours of vaccination, mostly because they believed in what the media said and claimed it to be safe. However, I strongly believe that if we read the news carefully and read a variety of news from many sources, including foreign news. We should be able to get more information for vaccine selection and be more careful about our lives.
DeleteIn my opinion, It is because the news outlets might want to get the audience's attention, which will give them the income. Some news is difficult to speak to different kind of audience. For example, relating to Thai politic situation, of course we have both different sides and I found many television choose to spread the news of the reality of society, but the other side chooses to turn it off for fear of the consequences. And it is possible that the owner of the television station has a different political opinion. However, the audience is the one who chooses what suits them. Mainly I guess it is about organization's system and how they cooperate.
ReplyDeleteI personally think that the media sometimes presents a distortion of facts due to bias. Everyone has their own sides, the media has too. For example, there are many free TV channels in Thailand which I would say that most of them report the same news in different ways depending on which side they are satisfied to do so. Had there been only one channel on TV, we would have not expressed our ideas.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Ten years past, I think media still report with full of the bias to brain wash people. I can see clearly from many channels that reporters sometime put their opinion when they are reading the news. They make a judgement on what happening. However, I wonder that whether we do have any stations that do have political neutral comment when they read the news for us.
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