Today we will start Unit 11 "Making the News" Citizen Z B1
It talks about journalism so, very properly, its main grammatical content is Reported Speech. At the end of this lesson you will have to write your own news report. Guess what that news report will have to be about! Surprise! Covid-19. So, you will do well in getting updated but check the source of the news, maybe it is a fake news! Well, that will be later.
1. For the time being, analise the following video:
2. Ex: Now summarise the tips this journalist gives to keep safe.
3. Next, answer the questions on page 121
4. a. Do the pre-reading activities 1-4 on page 122
4. b. Here you have two examples of fake news that some serious journalists wrote. Read and explain what the prank was, who wrote it and the effects it had.
In 1985, a Sports Illustrated reporter tricked other journalists with a story about an incredible rookie baseball player
On April 1, 1985, a Sports Illustrated reporter named George Plimpton wrote a story describing an impressive young man who was training at the Mets camp in St. Petersburg, Florida. He dubbed the young man "Sidd Finch" and wrote that he could pitch a baseball at 168 mph (the current record for fastest pitch is 104.3 mph).
In Plimpton's report, he wrote that Finch was raised in an English orphanage, studied mind-body mastery in Tibet, and had never played baseball before the Mets camp.
It wasn't just excited fans that Plimpton's article tricked. Other journalists were duped as well. According to The New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times sent a reporter to find Finch and one New York newspaper's sports editor was apparently upset with Mets' public relations man, Jay Horwitz, for not giving him the scoop first.
A German newspaper unintentionally tricked American newspapers into thinking the first man-powered flight machine had been invented in 1934
A German newspaper, Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, published a story in 1934 that told of the invention — and use — of a "lung powered" one-person plane. The outlet posted a photo of a person with two rotors on their chest and skis to land. The photo and story were enough to convince The New York Times to report on the story. The news outlet posted the photo with the caption "Man flies on his own power for the first time in history."
In actuality, Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung published the story as a joke for their April Fools' Day edition. International News Photo, however, apparently distributed the photo without discerning it as fiction.
The New York Daily News, the New York American, the Daily Mirror, and the Chicago Herald and Examiner also reportedly wrote stories based on Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung's satire piece.
5. Read the text and do exercises 5 and 6 on page 122.
Comments