Critiquing health news: 10 tips from my students
Reading the news is a great way to follow what happens in the world, but the stories aren’t neutral and accurate. How to critically digest the news is a valuable skill that can be taught, and that is developed through practice. That is what my class Critiquing Health News is about.
During this spring semester, 30 students of Emory College discussed media articles about scientific studies on health and disease, one each week. They explored the science behind it and compared the science with the news. We discussed each reporting from a new perspective or with a different focus.
As a final assignment of the course, they each wrote a letter to their family and friends with 10 recommendations on how they can follow the news more critically. Here are the top 10 that I selected from their work, shared with permission.
1. Be a skeptic
“I believe the most crucial part of being a consumer of news, specifically news dealing with health, is to be a skeptic. All of the following concepts I will speak of below constantly fool consumers of the news daily and we fall for it by not being skeptical enough. Being a skeptic doesn’t mean opposing every article or idea that appears in the news; rather, being a good skeptic includes questioning an idea, while keeping an open-mind to being proven right or…
