How to read a newspaper

Today in my War and Diplomacy class, my professor told us a story of the most important lesson he ever had during his university days. According to him, the name of the module was "How to read a newspaper".

For this module, he and his classmates each had to read a newspaper daily for a certain period of time. During this time, they made observations of the presentation of the news in the papers. He told us that this lesson taught him a lot and is still pertinent today, many years later. In fact, according to him, our local papers still use the same methods, intentionally or otherwise.

The methods of writing/ publishing are:
1) The juxtaposition of opposition.
The example he raised was the recent article in the Straits Time about fees hike for the public transportation due to rising fuel price. Right next to that article on the same page, there was another article that said something to the effect of SIA record profits due to falling fuel price. On the same page here you have 2 different articles stating the exact opposite. According to him, this method was often used deliberating by editors to make a point about current issues in society. By giving 2 contrasting stories, the editors of the newspaper are telling the readers to think about what is happening and go figure, not taking things at face value.

2) Discontinuity of argument
He told us that he had been in Singapore for quite a few years and there was once, if anyone can remember, when the Suzhou Industrial Park was everything that you could read about in the local papers. Then suddenly, one day, Suzhou disappeared from the face of Singapore. From that moment on, he knew something was wrong. True enough, it was soon revealed that Suzhou was going very badly. The telling sign was the change in the plane of the argument. So next time when you read papers, look out for any changes in the argument to know that something is wrong.

3) Locutional-intentionalist
In short, locutional-intentionalist means the opposite of whatever said is true. Locutional-intentionalist statements are often prescriptive and not descriptive. That is to say, they do not reflect the actual state of society but what it should be. By extension, whatever is stated in a locutional-intentionalist is not present in the society and therefore not true. His example was the "Speak Mandarin Campaign". Looking at a banner with his friend, his friend exclaimed to the slogan of "Speak Mandarin, Use It Don't Lose It", "How do I lose something that I don't even have to begin with." In short, many Singaporean Chinese can't speak Mandarin here in Singapore though we should be able to.

4) Don't believe anything until it's officially denied
If a thing is not true, there is no need to deny it. The moment you deny it, it signals that the incident is plausible, but "not" true. Case in point. So next time look out for official denials.