News editors decide what to broadcast on television and what to print in newspapers. What factors do you think influence these decisions? Do we become used to bad news? Would it be better if more good news was reported?
Sample Response
It has often been said that "Good news is bad news" because it does not sell newspapers. A radio station that once decided to present only good news soon found that it had gone out of business for lack of listeners. Bad news, on the other hand, is so common that in order to cope with it, we often simply ignore it. We have become immune to bad news and the newspapers and radio stations are aware of this. While newspapers and TV stations may aim to report world events accurately, be they natural or human-made disastersnatural or human disasters, political events or the horrors of war, it is also true that their main objective is to sell newspapers and attract listeners and viewers to their stations. For this reason, TV and radio stations attempt to reflect the character of each stationreflect the flavour of their station by providing news broadcasts tailored totailor-made to suit their audienceslisteners' preferences. ProgramsProgram specialising in pop music or TV soap operas focus more on local news, domestichome issues and up-to-date traffic reports. News outlets with a more serious focusThe more serious stations and newspapers like to provide "so-called" objective news reports with editorial commentarywith the editorial comment that analysesaimed at analysing the situation. If it is true thatIf it is true, then, that newspapers and TV stations are tailoring their news to their readers' and viewers' requirements, howrequirements how can they possibly be reporting real-world eventsreal world events honestly and objectivelyin an honest and objective light? Many radio and TV stations do, in fact, reportdo; in fact, report items of good news but they no longer call themthis news. They refer to these as human interest stories and package them in programmes specialisingthe program specialising, for instance, in consumer affairs or local issues. Good news now comes to us in the form of documentaries about the fightdocumentaries the fight against childhoodchildren cancer or AIDS, or the latest developments in the fight to save the planet from environmental pollution.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response offers perceptive explanations of commercial pressure, audience preferences, and public desensitization, supported by a strong range of topic-specific vocabulary. However, it never clearly decides whether reporting more good news would be better, and presenting the whole essay as one paragraph weakens the structure. Give each question a distinct, developed response and state an explicit judgement about the value of increasing positive coverage.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The factors shaping news selection and habituation to bad news are relevant, but the final question about whether more good news would be better is not directly answered.
State and justify a clear judgement on increased good-news reporting rather than only describing where positive stories currently appear.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas follow a broadly logical sequence and linking is generally clear, but the absence of paragraphing obscures the response's separate arguments.
Organize the response into focused paragraphs for editorial influences, desensitization, and the evaluation of more positive news.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a broad, flexible range of precise media-related vocabulary, with only a few awkward or inaccurate combinations.
Refine expressions such as children cancer and programs specialising so otherwise strong lexical control remains consistently natural.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A variety of complex structures is attempted successfully, although agreement, punctuation, and missing-word errors recur in several sentences.
Proofread sentence boundaries and clause links, especially the rhetorical question, the misplaced semicolon, and the final documentary example.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
News editors decide what to broadcast on television and what to print in newspapers. What factors do you think influence these decisions? Do we become used to bad news? Would it be better if more good news was reported?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.