Media Critical Analysis

Media Critical Analysis
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On March 28th, 2020, The Canberra Times published Dan Jervis-Bardy’s article on how ACT schools in Australia were planning to start online learning due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The world is currently battling the Covid-19 pandemic which has paralyzed programs and opinions in all parts of the world (Palmer et al. 2020). This has consequently affected term dates for schools as students and teachers have to stay at home as a measure of curbing the spread of the virus. Such a time as now under normal circumstances, Canberra schools would be having a busy time. Canberra’s education system has been upended by the coronavirus, and this has turned homes into classrooms while some teachers have become relief teachers, at least for the moment. Whereas this is a noble idea that will keep learners on track on their learning, it fails to consider the fact that such services are inaccessible to some students, especially those from interior areas or those who have travelled outside Canberra or even Australia.
Jervis-Bardy’s article also notes that the initiative to start online classes had been announced by the ACT government, implying that schools within the territory would engage in online learning. As I would expect, this announcement was received with mass confusion across the entire community for the next 36 hours (Jervis-Bardy 2020). However, there is no justification for the confusion that spread in the city since it had been in lock-step from the other jurisdictions, a move that saw schools in the territory continue operating even during the pandemic. At this point, it would be expected that Jervis-Bardy digs deeper to establish how the move to keep students and teachers at school amid the virus affected them. Where there any new infections? The author proceeds to explain why the move was taken without addressing whether or not there were any infections.
Jervis-Bardy also makes it clear that now that homeschooling was considered the new norm, there was a need to train teachers on how to effectively deliver the classes online. This was an urgent need, and the article fails to make it clear on whether or not it was done. Jervis-Bardy should have briefly addressed how the government addressed the issue and how it affects the teachers’ ability to deliver the content remotely (Jervis-Bardy 2020). This shows the manner in which the strategy was rushed, but it could also show the author’s failure to dig in for more information on what measures were put in place before rolling out the new teaching and learning method. There is not a single mention of any efforts by the author to find out ACT’s approach to the entire scheme (Chinazzi et al. 2020). In this case, Jervis-Bardy has mainly focused on reporting the events without any critical analysis to it. It is clear that he fails to situate his media and journalistic skills within this section of the article.
According to Jervis-Bardy’s article, ACT aims at using the Weston Creek, which is an old and repurposed college campus as the mission control for the transiti...