It's All Journalism

The broccoli of media-focused podcasts.

  • Podcast
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • How to Podcast
  • Newsletter
  • Take a Survey

412. Critical thinking is an essential skill for journalists

1June 4, 2020 by Amber Healy

Journalists take their obligations seriously to try and discern the facts from the lies or misinformation, but that doesn’t mean only double or triple-checking sources and bits of data. 

What journalists really need are critical thinking skills, says Jonathan Haber, author of Critical Thinking, the 50th title in Essential Knowledge Series from MIT Press.

Jonathan Haber is the author of Critical Thinking from MIT Press

“Given the time we’re living through, where you have competing information that can have life-or-death consequences, the need to think independently and critically, rather than believe what we’re told, is more crucial than ever,” Haber says. 

Think of the world of science, with its structures and methods for taking a question and driving toward a confirmation or dismissal of a hypothesis. Science is “more of a culture, a culture of ways and ways of checking your own thinking and ways of thinking that diminishes the likelihood that you’ll believe something that’s false,” Haber says.

Journalists, like teachers and people in other skilled professions, have internalized some concepts and facets of critical thinking into their approach to work, but it’s not embraced or necessarily taught on a systematic level, Haber says. 

“Facts are the lifeblood of journalism. They’re terrific, they’re important, I’m a big fan of fact checking sites, but facts are not enough,” he says. For example, if someone wrote an editorial arguing that social distancing measures put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 were not effective because the death toll is still rising, the facts made in the editorial are true: people have been social distancing for a month or more, and the death toll has continued to increase. 

“Those two premises are true facts. Fact checking would confirm that the facts are right,” he says. “But if you look at the conclusion, it’s clearly false. Why is it false? It’s false because the facts, the evidence doesn’t prove enough reason to believe the conclusions. Nobody promised us that social distancing would work immediately, we were told it would take time. The argument is invalid, it’s a weak argument.” 

No efforts toward fact checking are wasted, Haber stresses, but that’s only one part of the process for truly thinking critically about an argument, a statement or a policy. 

It’s All Journalism host Michael O’Connell talks to Jonathan Haber, author of a new book on critical thinking from MIT Press, about how journalists can use critical thinking to improve their reporting.

391. America has a bad case of truth decay, according to new RAND report
Share Button
If you like this post, please share it along:

Previous Post

Allan Lasser is co-founder of Massive Science
411. Massive Science behind covering COVID-19

Next Post

police response to protests
413. Long history of bad police responses to protests

Trackbacks

  1. Top 10 podcast episodes of 2020 – It's All Journalism says:
    January 27, 2021 at 9:27 pm

    […] Critical thinking is an essential skill for journalists […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply




Related Posts

  • Better News: Post & Courier uncovers new revenue with mini-publisher model
  • John Vitti is the founder of Headliners in Education.421. Teach journalism to expand a kid’s worldview
  • Michael Telek and a screenshot of his joke about Tom Brady.#344 One reporter’s fumbled joke and a lesson learned
  • Ralph Engelman#294 — Polk Awards honor gutsy investigative reporting

Learn How To Podcast

Turn Up the Volume equips journalism students, professionals, and others interested in producing audio content with the know-how necessary to launch a podcast for the first time. It addresses the unique challenges beginner podcasters face in producing professional level audio for online distribution. Beginners can learn how to handle the technical and conceptual challenges of launching, editing, and posting a podcast.

Order this new book by It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell.

Take a Survey, Earn Some Swag

If you haven’t heard, we created a five-question online survey to help us assemble a toolbox for journalists that we’ll share on our podcast and website. Please take a few minutes to share the tools that help make your job easier.

We’ve also just launched a new survey on how to improve our podcast. Let us know how we could do better.

To those people who complete one of our the surveys, we’ll be sending out a limited number of It’s All Journalism coffee mugs while supplies last. Show your support for good journalism by taking the survey and get a reward in return.

Help Support Our Podcast

Promoting good journalism is essential in a democracy. By donating to the It’s All Journalism Patreon page, you will help ensure that we continue producing the weekly podcast that focuses on good journalism. You’ll also help to boost us to the next level with live events and exclusive content. Donate here.

Sign Up for Our Weekly Newsletter

Latest Posts

  • Better News: Nonprofit newsrooms turn rivalry into revenue stream
  • 456. What Is Life shares stories of prisoners facing life sentences
  • 455. Making Google, Facebook pay their fair share for news
  • 454. Solutions Journalism tackles community problems
  • 453. Making sure Wikipedia shows that Women Do News

Copyright © 2021 · Pintercast Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in