Empower Journalists 4th batch Bias session

Sunday mornings are best spent doing something one loves. 

This Sunday, it was taking a session on bias for our young journalists. 

Usually, participants enter the bias session sleepy eyed (Sunday morning and all that) and leave rather wide-eyed. 

But on this particular Sunday, it was the kids who made my day. 

Our children, dear peers, have far less bias and stereotyping in their heads than we do. 

On the gender stereotyping questions, for the first time, the kids did NOT imagine that a nurse is necessarily female, nor that a person who has to leave office to pick up kids is necessarily a woman. 

But it gets even better. One of the games in class is Bias Bingo - in which we read out common biases among children - like favouring a tall person as the group leader, etc. There were 24 entries, and the children had to mark their Bingo ticket for each bias that they have demonstrated. The top score in class was 10/24, and the average score was 7/24! 

Let me explain the importance of this - these children have NOT felt that they would be friends with someone because they are a celebrity, or that they would think that a fat friend is lazy, or that a tall person should be the group leader, or is smarter than others, without any evidence to back that perception. 

These 24 biases are well established global perception biases. Our usual scores are about 18-20, and the kids end this game with sheepish grins, realising how much bias they demonstrate in their daily lives. 

This is the first time we have experienced such a low level of inherent bias. 

I think, in a very small way, I witnessed something big yesterday. 

How to spot fake news, clickbaits, whataboutery, and other dubious media practices

This post is a series of comments made on another post on LI. 

You know a news is fake when:
A. It has too much fortune telling with very little specifics. Look for words like - may, potentially, is expected to, allegedly, might, will, reduces risk, increases risk, dramatically increases risk, will be isolated, will give a boost to, estimated to.

B. It uses positive and negative adjectives in more than 40% of the content. "Greatest" "First Time ever" "The grandest" "Poor display of"

C. It presents "facts" that only reinforce one side of the story.

D. It appeals to the emotional. it can use words like "Cultural heritage", "Victimised", "Ancient origins", "Only ones to meet this treatment". OR it might just use adjectives or verbs that are emotional rather than factual. A factual news piece would read - "One study estimates that ocean trash in the Indian Ocean is 20% more than last year." Then go on to provide details of how this estimate was arrived at. A media story would go - "Dirt Reaches the Indian Ocean: Trash to Double Within Five Years" then go on to first present fortune telling, and make no effort to explain how the study was conducted.

E. Bold headline statements - "Scientists make ship out of plastic bottles" Reality? ONE pilot project has been submitted as a research paper at a peer reviewed journal. "This <something> holds the key to <that something>. " Reality - Some researcher has done some simulation and arrived at one estimate.
A factual news piece will give you a lot of facts - both supporting and negating a hypothesis, if a hypothesis is in order. It will state facts using neutral terms - Rajasthan Chief Minister quits. Not "Rajasthan Chief Minister quits amidst speculation of a rift in party." The latter is clickbait and sensationalism. Don't click on them, don't read those stories.

The Gap between when we learn and when we need it

My son started learning meditation when he was 7-8 years old. 

Why? 

Because at that age, the child does not have to do any unlearning. We can start with simple things like deep breathing and guide the child to the format of meditation that works for them. It can be dhyana, it can be Bhakti. It can be focus based or love based. 

The second important reason is that with an early initiation into meditation, the child grows up with a strong inner calm, and more importantly, a technique that they can use to center themselves when needed. 

Children don't need these skills until much later - the High school is perhaps the first time that a child feels exam or peer stress and needs a relaxation or centering technique. But by that time, the child has already had years of practice and slips right in, avoiding the trauma of teenage hormones.  

He learnt Speed Reading in 2019, when he was 12 years old. We fought. 

"I don't need this." he stormed. 

"Yes, right now you don't. But when you do need it, you won't have time to spend on learning it, nor the time to practice. To use it effectively then, you will have to learn it now and practice it pointlessly till then." I countered, "Just trust me on this." 

Reluctantly, he did. He completed a 5 week course in a single sitting, going from 200+ words per minute to a top speed of 1400 words per minute. 

After that, I encouraged him to speed read at least some of the times, and while he wasn't all gung-ho, he complied. 

Then came Grade 9. And he was able to read fast enough to complete reading and find time to play. 

He learnt Speed Maths from the ages of 8 - 10. 

This Speed Maths was created by me at the age of 11 to deal with my own maths issues. So, it covered only the things that we needed as students - prime nos, multiplication of prime nos, squares, cubes and cube roots, basic identities, multiplication and division. 

Same story. 

"I don't need this!" 

"Not right now, but in a few years, you will." 

"No i won't." 

"When high school maths hits, what kills you is not the concepts. The concepts are easy enough to get. It is the laborious calculations - 13 * 17 *19. But you learn that right now. Just trust me on this." 

And he did. 

We did not use practice sheets. We just practised with number plates of vehicles around us as we drove, or randomly while watching TV, or in the middle of unrelated fights. "Why is 1729 a special number?"  Because it is 7*13*19! And 1728? That's 12 cube. 

Come Grade 7,  the child was looking at those long calculations and finally benefiting from what he learnt years ago and had practised for years before needing it. He slipped right in. I got that Thank you. 

He learnt self expression through theater at the age of 18 months.. we covered the Navarasa to understand and express exactly what we were feeling. We practised through books, and over a period of time, with situations that came up around us. He learnt to identify and express the real emotion. It took some struggling, but the core navarasas helped a lot. As soon as he learnt to talk, he learnt to talk about emotions too. I didn't know then, whether he was going to be an introvert, but I did know that the ability to identify and express exactly what you are feeling is a priceless skill, and hard to acquire later. It must begin with the acquisition of core language skills. 

As he grew up, I heard a lot of "Boys don't express themselves." But thankfully, was spared the experience. He and I had been identifying and articulating for many years before teenage and other difficult times struck. When the time came, we had already practised. 

He was taught logic puzzles from the age of 6 or so. When he was 8, I tried to do a logic puzzles class for other children, but found few takers. Any case, we kept at it at home. He had to solve logic puzzles with me, albeit reluctantly. This year, we did GMAT Critical Reasoning (he is 15). There were 35 practice questions. He got all 35 right. In his first attempt. He didn't even think it was a big deal. Indian students score lowest on the CR section of every test, because logic is not a part of our school curriculum at all. 

Before the age of 3, he had heard 6-7 languages inside the house. I spoke them deliberately, sometimes mixing words from 2 languages in the same sentence! Everyone called me crazy, but I just kept doing it. Today, he understands those 5-6 languages to a reasonable degree. He has never needed them - yet. 

So, what is the point? 

The point is, that the age at which children are best suited to learn a few things, and the age at which they need to use those things, are very far apart. The time at which we teach our children these skills, is years before they see any real need of them. But at the right time, they find that they are able to manage just fine. That is neither automatic nor a coincidence. It is because two vital things have happened: 

A. The child has acquired the skill when their brains were growing the fastest - the first 3 years are the fastest stage of growth, then 5 years, then 8, and then, the growth slows till the age of 18 or thereabouts. We do learn after the age of 18, but compared to our potential in the early years, it is much lesser. 

B. The child has had years of slow but consistent practice. In a peaceful, non-stressful way. There really is no substitute for slow, consistent, fun practice. Even if you remember once a year that 2197 is the cube of 13, that is important. And it will come to you, almost automatically, when the need arises - 10 years later, when you are prepping for entrance exams. 

So, we, as parents, need to understand that some of these skills, which go on to form part of our IQ, EQ, and SQ, start much before the child actually needs them. And as enrichment educators at TCP, we need to find a way to teach that to other parents. 

Why does no one publish unbiased news any more?

 This was a question on Quora. Good Thought prompt. My answer: 

There isn’t because that is not what the public wants. Everyone *says* they want unbiased news but everyone reads the drama.

If you want an unbiased view, all you need to do is get to the facts yourself. And if that is not possible, read two or three publications. Thats it. Its as simple as that.

At The Children’s Post, we have strict editorial guidelines that forbid us from using adjectives that are either positive or negative. Even sports news don’t start with “Germany Crush XYZ” or some such. And I can tell you how hard that is. To get people to constantly re evaluate their work in light of these editorial guidelines.

But what is easy is getting to the source and understanding the concepts yourself. And deciding what is news and what is not. A politician making a comment is not news. The Congress passing a legislation - that’s news. In India, the text of all laws is available for us to read. So, we go and read the actual text of the law instead of depending on anyone to interpret it for us.

Likewise, when a scientific discovery happens, we go and check what stage the research is at, and then decide to publish it only if it is at pre-production or production stage. We also check if there is a conflict of interest in the funding of the study. But readers don’t even ask for the stage of research when reading headlines!

All of this, one can most certainly do to become a consumer of unbiased news. The bias is in the mind of the readers. The news agency is just feeding it. Every journalist knows how to write unbiased news. Think about why they don’t.

What are the skills a journalist needs in 2021?

 

1. A journalist needs a good memory more than ever before. I am aware of entire documents and statistics changing online. Most ppl today get their content from online sources, which, by definition, can be altered, a la 1984, much, much faster.
2. A hunger for information. A real, inborn hunger. Not a learnt one.
3. Ability to see both sides of view. Ability to start with the assumption that every story has more than one side and all sides must be heard, and reported, accurately.
4. Ability to put people at ease. Very important.
5. A journalist must remember that the word journaling means - Recording. it does not mean - interpreting, Opining, taking sides.
6. This is the hardest - to keep one’s biases out of one’s writing like one keeps one’s hair out of one’s eyes.
7. The ability to say NO when temptation is offered, because it will be offered.
8. The ability to capture a 15000 word story in under 500 words.

Why is reading newspapers the best habit for children?

 These are the top FIVE reasons why every child needs to read a children’s newspaper every day.

1. Vocabulary - Books around us do not have the vocabulary that kids need. In our paper, we are covering the SAT word list. A child who starts reading at Grade 4 will be done with SAT vocabulary by Grade 8 and they will not even realise it. All children’s papers are doing something similar.
2. GK - This is the main reason why parents want kids to read newspapers. They may not remember everything from the paper on a day to day basis, but they will need that consolidated information at some point and it WILL come back to them when they need it. Its not just current affairs, but general awareness about various topics too. most children’s papers combine current affairs with other GK too.
3. Interest in various things - The best way for a child to learn about many different domains of knowledge is the newspaper. A newspaper covers everything from puzzles to literature and science to history. The child might read some items carefully and gloss over the others, but there really is no other way to ensure that the child gets this diverse exposure on a daily basis.
4. Logic Puzzles - Indian students perform badly in the Critical Reasoning section of most aptitude tests. The reason is that logic puzzles are not a part of their growing up. It is not that Indian children cannot analyse or do critical reasoning. it is that they have never been taught how to. A children’s paper brings them bite -sized, fun puzzles and before they know it, they are ready for Critical Reasoning. This is a tried and tested formula. My aunt ensured that I do logic puzzles as a child and after growing up, when i aced CR, i understood the importance of what she had done.
5. Imagery - Imagery, or visualisation, is one of the most critical adult skills. But it can only be developed in a child’s mind. As a child consumes text input, its brain automatically converts the words to pictures. This ability is called imagery or visualisation. These are the people who, when they grow up, are able to visualise complex scenarios, do wireframing, and other critical tasks for success. Children who are only given visual inputs cannot develop this ability. A newspaper, therefore, and not news channels or online games. Chapter books and not graphic novels. Illustrated books, but not videos. Newspaper is one of the BEST ways to develop the visualisation skill in a child because it is consistent and happens EVERY DAY.

How to do good fact check online

 

1. Go straight to the source. Yesterday, while fact checking a story on new type of neurons discovered behind the retina, we read the university press release, and other articles about the discovery. Then, we clicked on the journal where the paper was published. Then, we clicked on the supplementary information submitted by the study authors. That is where we realised that the study was conducted on mice, not humans. Nowhere, not in the press release, not in the articles, nowhere was it mentioned that the study is only at the first stage (mice). That is how painful fact check is and how obfuscating even supposedly scientific articles are.
2. When reporting on indices, ranks, etc., go and check what is the methodology of the study or how is the index compiled. Don’t trust any rank or index until you understand how the number was derived.
3. When reading about a contentious issue, always read publications that give both sides of the story. For Lakshadweep, the major news channels reported that the locals are being tormented by the administration. But when I read the official records and the small publications that had dared to publish the other side of the story (and Quora), i realised that the real story was actually quite different. For Delhi’s pollution, we blame the parali or the crackers, but Delhi has as many as 3 thermal power plants within its territory and arguably Asia’s largest informal e waste recycling industry which burns the phones in open air. No one tells you that.
4. Trust nothing that is “proposed” or “will be done”. That is not news. That is fortune telling. After it is done and operational, it becomes news.

Secrets of Pixabay

As most readers might know, pixabay.com, pexels.com, unsplash.com etc are websites where photographers share their work. This work is available for free commercial reuse without attribution. 

I am a regular contributor to pixabay.com. While all my images are selected for publication, I was rather sad to note that they had 0 views and 0 downloads. I put that down to the poor quality of my photography. 

2 weeks ago, I was looking for a free image of mehndi or henna. There was NOTHING available on all 3 free websites. So, had to use a Wikimedia image. 

However, last night, on a lark, i decided to search for all images related to a label that is not very frequent and applies to a few of my submitted images. Then, scrolled to the end, and realised, much to my surprise, that though my images were tagged with those keywords, they did not come up in the search results for those keywords, even till the end. 

This means that Pixabay keeps some published images away from users even if they are approved and published. 

Pixabay calls this the differentiation between featured (in search results) and just published. There is no count of the number of images that are published but not featured, but as a user, it appears strange that a published image should not be searchable. What's the point, then? 

How does one deal with this? 

I found that if you follow an individual contributor, that might help. Look for images and when you see an interesting one, follow that contributor. That way, you can see their images in your network. 

Why we chose Judgify.me as our Contest Management Platform

We wanted to do a start-up contest for students. That meant that we needed a contest management software. 

The first step was to search for a WP plugin that offered an end to end contest management. We did find a few but they needed integrations, or were missing some key functionality. 

Next, we evaluated YouNoodle. 

Younoodle was already the platform being used by another startup contest where I was on the jury. The UX was so bad that we put it in the negative list almost immediately. 

After this, we came to the final step - yes, SaaS: An external platform that offers end to end contest management functionality. 

Our key asks were: 

A. Good UX, because this was for young students. We didn't want a data heavy, clunky UX. 

B. Flexibility. 

C. Ease of use 

D. Privacy 

E. Functionality - Assignment of Judges, Judges should be able to view and score online. 

F. Admin should be able to assign judges, see when they have scored, who needs nudging, and download scores, etc. 

G. User experience should be intuitive and easy. 

In the end, it was between 2 platforms : 

A. Dare2Compete 

B. Judgify 

Dare2Compete is a full fledged, feature-rich platform that caters to end to end contest management. The other thing that worked in favour of dare2compete was that it takes 3% processing fee for fees collected and also gives us access to its own native set of users. All events are manually checked by a review team before being approved, so that quality of contests available is also quite good. 

Judgify.me, on the other hand, appears to be a more recent platform. 

Eventually, we chose Judgify.me over Dare2compete. For those of you looking for a SaaS platform for contest management, this experience might be useful. 

• Friendly URL

Our URL was simply judgify.me/empower. This is easy to remember. It was customisable. A friendly url makes a world of difference to user experience for participants. 

• The creation process

The contest creation process at Dare2compete is very thorough. It is also long and does not allow us to save as draft. One event creation takes 30 minutes. It took 3 efforts to create a single event. 

• The event review process 

This, I thought, was a plus with Dare2compete.com. It builds the credibility of the platform. The review takes under 24 hours, and ensures that the quality of contests (and by extension, the quality of participants) we get is likely to be good. Judgify.me had no review process. Since we did not depend on the audience at judify.me, it did not impact our experience of the platform in any way. If we had wanted to borrow audience, we might have given Dare2compete more weightage. We did list the event there though, and got 6 registrations, none of which paid the registration fee. So the audience premium did not really translate for us. 

• The UX - Contest Participant 

Clearly, this was the clincher. The UX of Judgify.me for a contest participant is very easy, intuitive, and flexible. It allows the user to: 

   A. Partially enter their data. 

   B. Save entry as draft. 

   C. Make changes after submission. 

 

We found that the screen flow was very intuitive, did not involve a lot of learning for the user, and was neither clunky nor field heavy. There weren't so many fields that a person gets intimidated, nor so few that we can't get the information we need. 

• The UX - Jury 

When I tested the Jury interface, it was so perfect! When we register on Dare2Compete, we find that the jury member gets an email saying "password reset required." The jury member would and should not click on such an email. One does not password reset on a platform where they have never registered. We asked support if we could change the content of the email OR suppress it entirely. They said that both are not possible. That was a deal-breaker. That was not the experience that we wanted our jury members to have. In this day of security consciousness, password reset is absolutely the most unacceptable subject line to have. 

• Admin UX 

The Admin UX is adequate in both. There is some learning curve and some manual work that needs to be done. In Judgify.me, some jury members did not receive the emails and asked us to change the email id. So, I had to create them as a new entry. But overall, the Admin UX is fairly intuitive and we found it to be better than in Dare2Compete. 

• Support Responsiveness 

Another super important area for any event organiser. On this front, Judgify.me wins hands down. 

Disclaimer: In spite of being an Agile PM for over a decade, i am never in a hurry. When we raise a support ticket, we always have at least a 10 hour window for its solution. So, if responsiveness means 5 minutes or less, or if you are the kind of organiser for whom everything is L1, this rating may not be useful. 

Dare2Compete was only available on email, with an average response time of 24 hours. Further, there was no continuity in the messages. 

Judgify.me had a much shorter response time. But what was better was that even though it was only emails, one knew that one was talking to a real person (Joseph, in my case) and there was continuity. 

Expect an average response time of 2-5 hours. 

So, that is the story of how we chose our contest management platform. 

How to write a feature / news for The Children's Post of India

If you want to write news or features for The Children's Post, this feature is for you. 

Step1: Read and Understand 

Read at least 8-10 different sources before you start to write. Note down the key figures. Make sure you cross check ALL the key figures that you are going to present and also save the source of each key figure. For instance, if you are reporting a figure on women and their welfare, the only authorised figures are the ministry of women and child development, govt of India. 

Understand all the key terms. Don't assume the meaning of ANYTHING. Read, read, read and understand. 

Step 2: Readiness check 

In your mind, explain the concept to an 8 year old child. If you have a neighbour or a sibling, nothing like it. Otherwise, practise in your own mind, or with friends or parents. Make sure you talk to someone who does NOT know the topic before hand. 

If you are able to explain the topic to them and answer their questions, you are now ready to write a feature on your own. 

Step 3: Write 

Different writers have different techniques. Some just sit down and start writing/typing and get it all together. Some first prefer to structure their content, figuring out how it will flow and the word limit for each section. Then, they write the main points under each section, and then they start writing. Most of u s are somewhere in between. In general, it helps to start with 100% planning and slowly internalise it so it becomes automatic in your head. Its just like driving. When we first start driving, we do Brake-Cluch-Neutral like a checklist. But after a few months, we just do all this the minute we sit in the car. 

Step 4: Illustrate 

Find CC0 images or your own original images. Even if you are using CC0 images, pls give credit where you know the name of the photographer. Sometimes, you can do Steps 3 and 4 together. Sometimes, you can even start with a vital illustration and write the story around or based on that. 

Step 5: Put it together. 

Visualise your story - both in the paper and on the website. How will it look? Where will the image come? What should the background colour be? Combine the text and images and create a full story. 

Step 6: Check 

First, read it as a third person. Does the story hold your interest, or do you lose interest after a few lines? Is there a coherent story, or does it jump from point to point? How does the story make you feel? Do you put it down with a smile or a sense of wonder? Well done, then! 

Sometimes, we pick up some phrases from the internet unintentionally, or because they just say it better. Even Helen Keller was accused of stealing a story once! To ensure that this does not happen to you, take some of the interesting figures of speech, clauses, phrases etc. that you have used and google them or use a plagiarism checker. If there is a match, change that part. 

DO NOT depend on Grammarly or any other grammar check software. The idea of writing for TCP is to help improve your vocabulary and grammar. Read books by S Upendran and GMAT guides. The idea is to help you write flawlessly. Further, these apps are not as accurate as they need to be for TCP. 

Step 7: Review 

Have someone else read your submission. Ask them to check for grammar, facts, correct usage of words, structure, and interest - everything! 

If all is well, send it to us. 

We LOVE hearing from you. 

Important Tips For You 

• DO NOT expect perfection from yourself. 

            Not the first time, and not the hundredth time. And not the thousandth time. We will all make                 mistakes, we will all learn. 

• Originality before excellence

            Please remember - we really don't want the wittiest thing, or the best thing. We want YOU.                     Write in your own original voice. No one else can do that. 

• We are strict about copying or not giving credit 

            Like, crazy strict. We will stop publishing anything by you after the third strike. And if there is a             strike, we will not publish anything by you for a month. Same thing for avoiding credit or taking             images from other publications or from people without taking their express written permission. 

All the Best!