News Literacy

News is presented to the public in numerous mediums, including newspapers, magazines, television programs and the internet. With all of these sources providing information, it is obvious that some of the articles or stories will not be as reliable as others. By being news literate, capable of analyzing news reports and judging their credibility, the news consumer can accurately determine what information should be taken, and what should be discarded as opinion and unreliable. Criteria for good news should be developed and used while analyzing the news sources to determine which are accurate. This can be proven by looking closely at five articles about the recent testimony in a congressional hearing by the president of Toyota Motors on the recent and numerous recalls of their automobiles. Each discusses and emphasizes different aspects of the widely talked about controversy over Toyota’s faulty vehicles that have lead to many accidents and some deaths. These five articles from different newspapers, Japan Today, Daily News, The Times, CNN Money, and The LA Times, were analyzed in terms of three criteria: high-quality sources, no bias, and telling the whole story. By doing so, it is clear that some are more accurate and reliable than others, with The LA Times piece being the best source for an accurate portrayal of this hearing. The Japan Today article, written by Kelly Olsen, entitled “Toyota chief’s U.S. testimony closely watched in Japan” (2010) does not use poor sources, but only uses them from one side of the conflict, which in most instances is just as bad as having unreliable sources, giving the piece poor quality. There are no United States officials cited directly in this article which lowers the standard of this article by disregarding their important view on the matter. Also, all of the sources listed state the same idea about how well Mr. Toyoda’s testimony performance was. One of the quotes included was from Ryoichi Shinozaki, a crisis