NPR Blogger Gives Lesson on Bias to AU Students

NPR blogger, Gene Demby (left) discussing to Barry Gordemer (right) and an American University class about bias. October 9^th 2014 (Photo by Tori Tropiano) 

Gene Derby, a blogger for NPR’s Code Switch, visited American University Thursday Oct. 9 to talk to students in a communication class about bias in the media. He said that through his profession he has learned to “challenge the assumptions made by the media.” Derby learned to challenge assumptions in society and think through multiple perspectives. His advice was to challenge society’s assumptions and not accept what the public thinks is true.

Writing for NPR’s Code Switch, has helped Derby remove stereotype bias from his stories. He talked about a recent project he worked on about the story of Jeremy Lin, an Asian American basketball player as an example to of bias. Lin was a basketball player who did not receive any scholarships offers for college. Derby tried to challenge the bias stereotypes in this story as well as another, which he talked about.

Derby educated students on how biases develop and how every reporter develops biases because of their different upbringings. He concluded by talking to students about the importance of eliminating bias in writing and answered student’s questions on how they can remove bias in their own writing.

While scrolling through different news websites, I found an example of bias in the article “ Female-Named Storms Kill More”. The language used within the title incorporates gender bias to a topic that has nothing to due with gender.  Another example “Liberals Eagerly Put Women At Risk Because Of Politics” uses language within that subjects bias to gender and to politics.