New York Times Comm 30150 How Is News Reported A

Choose a news story/event from the list or work with me to find one of your own. It should be a
fairly substantial news story that appeared in the last few years and would have been reported
in a variety of news outlets.
2. Find at least 7 examples of reporting on the story from a wide variety of news outlets/channels
in a variety of formats (print, audio, video, podcast, etc.). Your examples should meet the
following criteria:
 Be examples of straight reporting not opinion, analysis, or editorial pieces
 At least 1 examples should be from foreign (outside the United States) news source.
 At least 1 example should be from an ethnic or alternative news source.
 At least 1 example from a far right or far left news source.
 At least 1 example from a well-regarded national newspaper (New York Times,
Washington Post, etc.).
 At least 1 video example from CNN or another prominent news network.
Be careful that the examples you select are not simply reprints of Associated Press (AP) versions
of the story (look at the author). If you are struggling to find examples or have questions about
any of your sources, please talk with us as soon as possible.
While you can obviously use Google News and other similar online sources, there are several
library databases you can use to find news. To access them, go to the library’s homepage, then
Subject Guides, News, News Sources or http://library.louisville.edu/ekstrom/news-sources
 Lexis-Nexis (has transcripts from media news sources as well as foreign news)
 Access World News (lots of smaller, more local papers and foreign news)
2
 US Newstream (includes Louisville Courier-Journal)
 Ethnic Newswatch
 Newspaper Source (Ebsco)
 New York Times
 Alt-Press Watch (includes advocacy press, left-wing, libertarian, and other issueoriented news sources)
3. Create a bibliography of the examples you find in a citation style of your choice. Identify
whether each story is a straightforward/traditional news report or if it veers more towards
analysis/commentary on events.
4. Write a double-spaced paper of 4-6 pages analyzing the similarities and differences you find in
the ways the story was reported. Consider the following questions in your paper. You do not
necessarily need to answer every question in detail, but your analysis should demonstrate that
you have thoroughly considered these aspects of the reporting. You should also use ideas from
our class discussions and readings (e.g., Bennett, Graves, Parenti) to inform your analysis.
Your analysis should NOT be focused on the source’s perceived political bias (Fox is
conservative, CNN is liberal, etc.) If you do not go beyond those terms, your grade will reflect
a lack of engagement with the class readings!
Content/Framing
 In what outlets did the story appear?
 What similarities and differences can you identify in how the stories are framed
across media outlets?
 What headlines were used? How do the headlines frame the story?
 How long were the stories? Which outlets provided the most and least detail?
Which details were emphasized and why? What was left out or what questions
remain unanswered?
 How were the stories organized or structured? How do organizational choices
impact the framing and/or narrative?
 How does word choice in the stories impact the content or tone? Was there
evidence of biased language or language that might be “loaded” in some sense?
Sources
 What kinds of sources were used in the stories and why? People? Documents?
Other media outlets? Anything else?
 Were prominent politicians, political leaders, or government officials cited in
any of the stories? How were they introduced or described? Were their words
taken at face value? Were they analyzed or fact-checked in some way?
 How were sources balanced? Was there evidence of false balance or other sides
that weren’t consulted?
 Were experts cited? Who were they and what were their credentials? Did all the
outlets cite the same experts? Trace at least 2 of the experts’ credentials. Are