The latest “wife of” headline — ITV News’s report on the actor Lisa Faulkner revealing that she has undergone surgery after a cancer diagnosis — is an opportunity to get journalism students exploring how different forms of bias might shape news reporting — and not just the obvious ones.
Continue reading
I’ve written previously about the role that cognitive biases play in journalism, how to avoid confirmation bias, and anticipate criticism based on fallacies — but one cognitive bias I haven’t written about yet is the availability heuristic — or availability bias.
Availability bias is the tendency to reach for the most available reason, event, or tool, when confronted with a problem or decision.
Continue reading
Online Journalism Blog 