ABSTRACT
The situation grows even more interesting when we look at newspapers and news
media more generally. One of the basic lessons to learn is that the media are highly
edited: information is selected, filtered, prioritised and presented with all kinds of
hidden (or barely visible) agendas in mind. Of course, as mature savvy adults we
know this. But how many children pass through the educational system without
realising it? I feel that the more pupils are alert, aware and awake to bias, spin and
hidden agendas, the more incisive will be their analysis of language contexts, and
the more able they will be to weave language to suit their own purposes (bearing in
mind that the root of the word context is ‘to weave’).
