Unit 5: Creating Perspectives During this year, students have explored the idea of perspective by learning about and applying various critical lenses to literary texts. All of these perspectives allow students to view texts through a particular set of ideas or assumptions, in effect reading the texts differently depending on the perspective being explored. Looking at real events, rather than literary texts, poses the different but related challenge of discerning which version of reality is closest to the objective truth. This challenge is particularly significant in the context of how the media relate events. From reporting a war in a foreign country to covering a local city council meeting, the media have an obligation to report news events in a manner that is balanced, representing the facts of the story in an objective manner. In this unit, though, students will explore how the meaning of something is seldom limited to its facts. Students will be asked to analyze the reporting of events, looking at all aspects of the reports. This unit asks students to become an active rather than passive viewer of journalistic texts, recognizing that journalistic reporting, like a literary text, needs to be read or “decoded” carefully.
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