Pick a specific, single international event and examine how this event is presented by different news media sources from around the globe. Compare the articles you have selected for this assignment and discuss how the differing ways in which the event you have chosen actually reflects more than the "plain" facts, but rather reveals complex layers of social values, assumptions, biases, beliefs and meanings by each of your articles' authors.

Analyze how “historiography” is an ongoing process largely influenced by the news media. History is a subjectively generated product. History incorporates the biases and viewpoints of those who produce it. The news media today is a key source in providing us with “meaning” connected to newsworthy “historical” events. In fact, the news media is in fact a major part of the process that generates "history.” Although news media reporters and editors frequently claim that they are presenting “just the facts," the way in which these “facts” are presented often carry a number of biases that strongly influence public perception and interpretations of current events.

Selecting a Topic

1) First, select a single international news event that has occurred in the past 60 days (No earlier than April 1, 2019). Since the purpose of the paper is to address international issues, the event you select for this assignment must have occurred OUTSIDE of the United States (although the issue may INCLUDE the US as one of the agents involved).

If you are struggling to find a topic for this paper, you may want to check out respected news sources online such a CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera, etc. to get a sense of current news events that are relevant to this assignment.

2) Your topic should be a single, recent event, not an ongoing issue. For example, you might choose to discuss a recent, single action that took place in Yemen or Afghanistan or Syria or the Central African Republic, or Palestine, etc., but you may NOT choose the overall, ongoing violence in Yemen or Afghanistan or Syria or Venezuela, or Palestine, etc., as your topic.

Selecting Articles

3) You will need to have collected at least four newspaper articles on the SAME EVENT from DIFFERENT nations. You are only permitted to use one article from a US newspaper source and your other three article choices should be on the same event but each one must be selected from a DIFFERENT newspaper and from a DIFFERENT nation. In other words, each article you choose will come from a different nation’s newspaper, but all four articles must still be focused on the same event and should have been published within 48 hours of each other. You may use online versions of newspaper articles. You will need to submit hard copies of each of your newspaper articles when you submit your completed assignment.

You may NOT write your paper about an event that occurred in the US

Do not use articles from either the opinion or editorial section of a newspaper.

Please do not use op-ed pieces

4) WRITE a 2000 minimum word (double spaced, medium size 10 –12 font, standard margins) in which you provide a summary and comparison of the different articles you have selected for this assignment, include a bibliography/reference page with your final paper. You will search for differing emphases and patterns between your articles, and you will consider the differing impact each individual article might make on its reader depending on how the issue is presented and handled by each author. You are to examine and critique the differing ways in which the issue is being presented in your articles.

Also, for this paper, you need to consider how the news reports of today become the “historiography” of tomorrow. This is an opportunity for you to think critically about how the news is presented to the reader in each newspaper. Do you have a sense that certain “facts” are being emphasized in one article while those same facts are dismissed or ignored or presented somewhat differently by the authors in some of your other selected articles? Do you have a sense that only one particular side of the issue is being presented in a particular article? If so, why do you think this is happening? In what ways has the event you have selected for this assignment been reported differently in each of your articles? (Keep in mind that these differences may be subtle). In what way might these differences influence the reader to draw a different conclusion about the event? A particular new article will often (though not always) tend to focus on only side of an issue. Which sides of the issue do you see being presented in your different articles? Why do you think this might this be happening? In what way might ethnocentric perspectives or national interests be influencing how the issue is being presented differently in each of your articles? Do you see any biases built into the way that the issue is being presented or reported by the authors of your articles?

Finally, what have you learned through this process? What have you come to understand about the production of "news" and the power of the news media over the reader by comparing these different articles?

You must include a hard copy of all of your newspaper articles with your final paper.