Critical thinking is the bedrock of quality journalism, serving as the essential foundation to help audiences better understand the world.
It is often assumed that journalists inherently possess this skill. While this may be true in many instances, it’s worth taking a closer look at what critical thinking actually entails, why it matters, and how journalists can apply it consistently.
A word of caution before we begin: The following suggestions are not a comprehensive list of to-dos, but rather a guide intended to help you develop a more self-critical approach to your craft.
What Is It?
Critical thinking is a term often associated with complex philosophical concepts regarding reality, human existence, or consciousness.
That’s not our focus here. In the context of this article, critical thinking is a practical tool used during every stage of the journalistic process: research, production, and post-publication follow-up.
As a rule of thumb, critical thinking means questioning the validity of your process, the information you gather, and the final product you publish. In its most basic form, you can critically screen your work by applying these three principles:
- Pause and reflect: Before diving into a story, step back and assess your journalistic approach. Avoid going full throttle without a plan.
- The one-more-question rule: Before starting production or hitting the publish button later on, ask yourself the relevant questions. For instance: “Am I doing the right thing?”, “Do I feel truly confident in both my journalistic process and my content product?” – This extra hurdle acts as an insurance policy to ensure you are headed in the right direction.
- Minimise assumptions: Avoid assuming facts. Make conscious decisions based on evidence that your audience can relate to, and proceed carefully to avoid misunderstandings – or worse, factual errors.
By applying these principles to the standard journalistic workflow, we can treat critical thinking as a mental framework for how we work.
In practice
Critical thinking in journalism is a practical, ongoing discipline of questioning your process, evidence, and output – by pausing to reflect, challenging assumptions, and consistently asking whether your work is accurate, justified, and on the right track.
Phase 1: Research
Here are key questions to ask yourself during the research phase:
- Clarity of purpose: Have I chosen the right story, and do I have a clear idea of what I want to communicate?
- Audience awareness: Do I understand my audience’s interests and informational needs, or am I merely assuming they care about this topic? How fact-based is that assumption?
- Subject expertise: Do I have sufficient knowledge of the key issues, or am I mostly dependent on expert input? Do I feel confident about the sources I am tapping into?
- Substance: Am I confident that I can gather enough facts, figures, and supporting material (interviews, data, etc.) to build a substantive story?
- Flexibility: Am I prepared for research that surfaces unexpected results, potentially shifting the story’s direction – or, at worst, making it a non-story?
- Feasibility: Given the above, can I meet the publication deadline?
- Reality check: Before starting production, do a reality check with peers, colleagues, or an editor.
- Technical readiness: Is the necessary technology available and reliable? Always have a backup plan.
In practice
Before moving into production, confirm that your story has a clear purpose, a real audience need, credible sources, sufficient evidence, realistic timing, technical readiness, and the flexibility to adapt if the reporting changes direction.
Phase 2: Production
Once your research has been completed to your satisfaction, proceed to production while keeping these points in mind:
- Confidence: Do you have the necessary skills, means, and resources to execute the story?
- Buffer time: Is the production schedule realistic? Build in a time buffer to account for unpredictable technical or logistical issues.
- Resource management: This is vital if you are multitasking or managing several projects simultaneously.
- Support: Know who to contact for guidance if you hit an obstacle.
- Progress monitoring: Stay critical of your workflow. Ensure you are delivering according to your plan and initial intentions.
- Deadlines: If you encounter a problem, don’t just push through to meet a deadline. Stop, rethink, and adjust.
- Quality control: Ensure quality control measures are in place. If you are a freelancer, you must be your own editor.
In practice
During production, ensure you have the skills, resources, and support to execute the story, manage time and workload realistically, monitor progress and quality closely, and stay flexible enough to reassess rather than compromise standards to meet deadlines.
Phase 3: Post-publication follow-up
In today’s fast-moving production cycles, the danger is that critical thinking stops the moment a story is published. However, this is precisely when you should take a moment to evaluate your work.
- Define success: Identify which data points are relevant to you and your employer (e.g., reach, watch time, audience engagement etc). If you are unsure what constitutes success, ask.
- Analyze feedback: Monitor user comments on social media, websites, or direct correspondence.
- Professional growth: Seek feedback from superiors and peers. While praise is rewarding, critical feedback is essential for improvement.
- Be realistic: You may not receive all the feedback you desire, especially when working independently. Focus on the metrics that matter most to you and your audience.
- Learn and move on: Document your lessons – both positive and negative. Do not lament what you cannot change; instead, focus on improving the next production.
- Self-critique: Compare your original plan with the final results. Tweak your methods accordingly.
In practice
After publication, evaluate success using meaningful metrics, gather audience and peer feedback, reflect honestly on what worked and what didn’t, and apply those lessons to improve future work.
Summary
Applying critical thinking to journalism is not rocket science; rather, it can and should be seen as a method of self-conscious analysis. It means refusing to accept the obvious, while digging deeper, and constantly asking, “Am I doing this right?”; “Can I trust my sources?”; “Do I feel confident about the facts and figures?”; “Does my world view unduly influence my journalistic product?; “Do I myself believe in the quality of the story?” There will be many more questions to reflect on but this is how you should proceed.
Final thought
Be realistic about your goals. While journalists strive for objectivity, we are all shaped by the world we live in. That is acceptable as long as we do not take shortcuts that corrupt our credibility. Keep at it – the world needs critical, thoughtful voices to cut through the noise.
