Activity 4: Evaluating Web Sources
Films such as Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK are often dismissed or trivialized by teachers, who label them as fiction and tell students they’re worthless -- or worse. But this casts teachers simply as standing on a soapbox. If students discover for themselves what about particular films seem authentic and what doesn’t, they learn in a way much deeper, more memorable, and more transferable to contexts outside the classroom. They learn to think for themselves.
To familiarize students with JFK and the controversies surrounding its accuracy, this activity begins with an analysis of the opening montage and discussion of a structured set of questions:
These questions can first be discussed in a large group, which provides the teacher with an opportunity to diagnose students’ understanding of the concepts of purpose, point of view, and authority (Hobbs, 1999).
As learners address the questions, the teacher emphasizes the importance of using specific evidence from the film clip to support their reasoning. For example, students should be able to recognize that specific facts mentioned about the U.S.-Soviet arms race and the “voice of God” narrator are construction techniques that communicate the montage’s purpose of providing information. When learners point out the film’s persuasive purpose, they should recognize how emotional music and sentimental stills of John and Jackie Kennedy are tools used by the director to affect viewers’ feelings.
Discussion of this clip stimulates students’ curiosity to learn more about the controversy surrounding the film’s accuracy. There are a number of Web resources for exploring this issue, and teachers might want to begin with audio files of Stone’s talk about JFK at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., available at www.astridmm.com/stone/. Students can then be invited to work with a partner to review several other Web sites concerning the Kennedy assassination and the Oliver Stone film.
At The Assassination Goes Hollywood!, for example, students will find a detailed chart that identifies specific scenes from the Oliver Stone film, demonstrates the distortions and inaccuracies, and includes a possible rationale for why Stone included key scenes. Students readily identify “What techniques enhance or diminish the authority of the message?” as the question most relevant to this site. The structure, format, graphic presentation, and ease of access enhance the site’s credibility. The clear identification of authorship provides context for understanding that the materials were developed for a college course on the assassination.
On a Web page titled “How Accurate is the Movie ‘JFK’?” author Michael Griffith presents a diametrically opposite point of view. The page reads, in part,
All observers would agree that Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK” prompted a national discussion on the assassination. The film pushed Congress to hold hearings on bills to release all of the sealed assassination files. Several documentaries on the shooting were aired following the movie’s release.... However, in my opinion “JFK” is substantially correct in what it says about the how and why of the assassination, and in its portrayal of Oswald’s activities before, during, and after the shooting.
In fact, the film presents dozens of claims and observations that are supported by credible evidence.
A list of facts is offered, but what students notice is that the page is not overproduced -- it contains no graphics or design elements. As one student said in examining this site, “It’s just a scholarly person who’s not interested in the glitz.” The low-end production values may lead students to the inference that the page was created by a scholar who may not be great at Web design but has done his homework in terms of the content. Each fact claimed in the film is tied to a published source, with title, author, and page references. By contrast, The Assassination Goes Hollywood! provides no documentation whatsoever for its claims.
It is important to point out that the use of title, author, and page references should not automatically lead students to judge a Web site’s authority as high. Upon closer examination of the materials, it appears that the same texts are referred to over and over, and that many appear to be secondary sources. In order to assess the authority of this Web site more deeply, it would be important to review some of the texts cited.
A critical paradox is revealed when learners are asked which of these two Web sites they find more believable, and why. When I asked this question of teachers at a conference workshop, their replies varied widely.
Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted April 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc. ISSN 1096-1232