This term Y9 have been looking at Multiculturalism in the UK; with the recent events in the news, I felt this was a pertinent opportunity to explore religious and political bias.
Equipped with a single day’s cross-section of newspapers (sourced at 6.30am from my local paper shop!) I asked the girls to find reports of recent events that involved religion in some way. They had to create poster charts, analysing particular perspectives. They were asked to look at headlines, tone, keywords, images and quotations/interview sources to see if their paper was biased or neutral in its coverage of the event. All the groups had a different papers (The Times, Daily Mirror, or The Guardian).
All three groups looked at the Finsbury Park Attack and particularly noted how only the Mirror went with the positive actions of the “Brave Imam” whilst the Guardian, i and Independent focused on the “Jobless” attacker. Whilst the items of the Glenfell Tower showed the Mirror and Express as covering community efforts of water and food packages, whereas the Guardian and Independent compared the wealth divide of the local area, and the different cultural funeral arrangements that needed to be made.
This lead to discussions about political alignments and public persuasion, which may explain why we ended with a hung parliament as the girls found very conflicting contrasts between the 5 papers!
