Lesson 24 — Activity 1: Credibility

Warm Up

In this activity, you will learn about credibility.

News reports, advertisements, television shows, and people can all have, or lack, credibility. To decide whether something has credibility, ask yourself, "Is it believable?" It is important for news to have credibility, and news stories can be said to be credible if they deliver the facts in an objective way.

Mass media may be used to persuade or sway opinions. It is important to know if information and sources used in the media are credible.

A number of factors contribute to being a "credible" source of information. Some important criteria to consider when assessing the credibility of information received from mass media are:

objectivity and bias
accessibility
freedom to report

Here is an example that shows how credibility works:

Pixabay

A local news reporter is covering the town council meetings about whether or not the town should allow for a highway to bypass the town. The local businesses are against the move because they feel that a decrease in traffic will affect the amount of shopping that will be done in their stores. The town's people feel that the new highway will reduce the amount of traffic that passes through their neighbouring streets, so they support the highway bypassing the town. The reporter has a meeting with the mayor who explains how this will affect the zoning and taxes in the town. At the end of the conversation the mayor adds, "Off the record," that he has been approached with some extra pocket money should he allow for the change in zoning.

Now the reporter has two options:

1. The reporter can do nothing and let the comment pass. OR

2. The reporter can stop the mayor and tells him that "off the record" can't really be added to a statement after the fact.

Should the reporter choose option 1, he becomes less credible and very unprofessional. However, if he chooses option 2, it is clear that the reporter is credible because he is committed to making the truth known.