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
News in both print media and televisionNews both in print media and in television should reflect the authentic, unbiased and important news for the audiences and such news playsthat news play an important role in terms of educating people, informing people about the current world and giving them an insight intoof political and social issuesview. But sadly this is not always the casethis is always not the case and news editors often broadcast and publishnews editors are often broadcast and publish biased and politically influenced news that does more harm than good to the society. There are various reasons for that. First of all, personal viewsFirst of all the personal views and political biasbiasedness are two important factors that cause this problem. Newspapers and TV news should ideally be two important forms of mediatwo great media to reach the people with the real and authentic news. People greatly rely on these media to get updates on events and current affairs and partial and biased newsthe impartial and biased news misleads them often. Often editors' political viewspolitical views of editors and their link to a particular political party lead to this problem. It is not uncommon that a chief editor gets appointed to the position by the powerful political party and he is expected to present news in favour of this party. Second, in many countries governmentsgovernment impose strict rules on what type of news can be presented to the public and that also causes problems in terms of fair and accurate news presenting. In many cases, money and corruption are involved in such harmful actsare involved for such heinous act. Again, many newspapers heavily rely on other renowned newspapers and the internetother renowned newspapers and internet for current news and if the source is corrupted, that leads to the case of printing and broadcasting biasedimpartial and misleading news. The personal threat, political reasons, power, greed, pressure and personal gains, business are the main reasons editors sometimes decide what to broadcast and what to print. I would not agree with the notion that we are used to the bad news as I have witnessed many cases when good newsa good news gets more attention and audience than bad news. It’s true that bad news is by its naturebad news is by their nature is appealing to people, but as a whole, we want to know about what is truly happeningthe true happening. Good or bad, people want to learn the truth. Often people’s attention can be achieved by publishing and broadcasting bad and negative news, but this is not always truethis is now always the truth as events like a peace treaty, World Cupworld up, noble contributions, achievements, good deeds and the political positive decision get more readers and viewers than bad news. In conclusion, we are not used to the bad news and editors do decide which news to be reached to the public or not based on their personal, business and political reasons.
Why this response received Band 6.0
The response offers a substantial range of plausible influences on editorial decisions and states a clear view that audiences have not simply become accustomed to bad news. However, its treatment of whether reporting more good news would be better remains indirect, and repeated wording, imprecise vocabulary, and grammatical errors weaken the argument; the priority is to answer that final question explicitly and support the judgment with a focused explanation.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The factors influencing editors and the response to bad news are addressed, but the question about whether more good news would be better is not directly resolved.
State a clear judgment on increased good-news reporting and explain its likely benefit or drawback with a relevant example.
Coherence and Cohesion
The overall argument is discernible and uses paragraphing, but the very long discussion of editorial influences is unevenly balanced against the later questions.
Organise one focused paragraph around each explicit question so that all parts receive proportionate development.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a reasonable range of vocabulary about media and politics, though repetition and inaccurate choices sometimes obscure the intended meaning.
Use precise media terms and proofread confusing choices such as impartial versus biased, true events, and news coverage.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The writer attempts varied and complex sentences, but frequent agreement, article, word-form, and clause-structure errors reduce accuracy.
Break overloaded sentences into complete clauses and check agreement and article use systematically during proofreading.
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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.