This week, you’ll begin a unit on contemporary issues in the United States. I’d like for you to take all you’ve learned this session and present a current event from one of our categories: political, intellectual, cultural, or social events. There are also two more, diplomatic and economic events, that you’ve learned about but haven’t completed an assignment on just yet.

For this week, please choose a current event involving important issues in the United States (please avoid sports, gossip, and entertainment news). You’ll need to choose three articles from the same event. Please use the news bias chart to choose one left-leaning source, one right-leaning source, and one middle-of-the-road source. Your articles should be no more than a month old and at least five paragraphs long at a minimum. Then you will write a two-page reflection essay on your articles.

Remember, good historians and news analysts (you) remain objective in their writing.

1. Thoroughly read your articles and answer the five Ws and How.

2. Start making notes where you compare and contrast your articles. How are they different? How are they the same?

3. In your own words, give a short summary of each article.

4. For the rest of your reflection essay, you’ll discuss the significance of this current event as a political, intellectual, cultural, social, diplomatic, or economic event and its significance to society in America. In your conclusion, please discuss what you learned about news bias (remember, remain as objective and professional as possible!) and whether or not it’s important to take in a balance of new sources.

When you write, make sure you mention the titles of the articles and the news sources in your introductory paragraph.

To see the most current version of the Media Bias chart, please visit Ad Fontes Media (Links to an external site.).