More Media Literacy: Polish President Articles

Read the following five articles and analyze their similarities and differences.

Please print these articles and annotate them before bringing them to class for discussion and analysis.

These five articles originate from five different news sources from around the world. The topic covers a press conference on 18 March 2004 by the former Polish President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, who had made comments regarding the failure of the United States to locate any viable weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the main reason that was articulated for entering the War in Iraq in 2003.

Poland had committed 2,400 troops to assist the United States in Iraq under the assumption that Iraq was poised to launch chemical weapons around the world. Several weeks prior to this press conference, chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay (who was personally selected for the job by President Bush) testified to Congress that no stockpiles or active WMD had been found, despite an intensive 10-month effort. Having incurred nationwide criticism for following the lead of the USA, the Polish President was forced to comment on Poland's participation in a war that was based on false pretenses (bad logos).

Essentially, your goal for Wednesday's assignment is similar to your task on the cloned puppy articles: to understand the differences that occur amongst these articles, knowing that each journalist was provided the same verbatim statements at the same press conference. Here are the five articles:

1. "Poland Was 'Misled' Over Iraq WMD" (BBC)

2. "Poland 'Misled' on Iraq, President Complains" (Toronto Star)

3. "Polish Leader: We Were 'Taken For a Ride' About Iraq's WMD" (Agence France-Presse)

4. "President of Poland 'Deceived' on Iraq" (International Herald Tribune)

5. "Polish President: We Were 'Misled' on WMD" (Fox News)

You will notice that four articles are international sources, and the fifth is from Fox News.

Print these articles and mark up your texts. Identify the important differences amongst these articles and be prepared to explain in class discussion why you think they exist. Draw conclusions about the impact that these differences have on the message.

These distinctions might be very specific differences in wording, tone, or other subtleties, such as their contexts, editing, or author's commentary. For example, if one writer claims that the Polish President said the word "good," but another claimed that he said "great," then there must be a reason to account for this difference.

Demonstrate your critical reading and thinking skills. We will spend time discussing these articles next time.

What We Did Today:

Reflection Essay Submitted

I collected the personal reflections in class today.

Once again, I asked everyone to flip over your last printed page and hand-write a response to another prompt. This assists me in evaluating your work. Here is the prompt:

Explain HOW you organized your essay and WHY you did it that way.

NOTE: I am not asking you to use any technical terms. Just explain your arrangement as best you can.

Media Literacy: Cloned Puppies

We reviewed the answers to the 10 questions on the assignment page, first in groups, and then as a class.

The lesson learned from this exercise is simple: when you find an article that provides the information that you have sought, don't stop researching. Find a second and third source to support your findings. Since every article will add or subtract small details, you need to seek secondary confirmation.

How do you know that the article that you found is accurate? Timely? Fairly articulated?

For example, notice that the first two articles inform the reader that Joyce McKinney paid $50,000 for her clone, but articles 3-5 modify this to $53,000. Clearly, additional information was gathered during those additional five days of investigative reporting. However, had you only come across the first one, you would have erroneously used the incorrect figure in your essay.

Granted, the difference in $3,000 is not very significant, but what about other details that differ across the five articles?

I also pointed out that the authors differ in each article, often including additional writers with the passing of time. This observation allows us to see the influence of each writer by recognizing the changes made to the updated version of the story. Be sure to check both the top and bottom portions of the article to see all the authors credited.

Furthermore, start examining the URLs of web pages more carefully. Notice where each of the online sources positioned their articles in their respective web site hierarchies. You can locate this information by looking at the file heading that follows the first slash in the URL (after the stem):

Washington Times: "news"
CNN: "Tech/Science" (Article #2)
CNN: "Crime" (Article #5)

Finally, we also examined the authority of these sources. Did you know that The Washington Times is owned by a religious cult?

How does this change the credibility of the story?

More on this to come ....

Explore Google News

I would like you to examine a powerful research tool that can help you to become exposed to a variety of points of view on any current issues topic:
the Google News page.

Google News provides real-time postings of news stories, mostly from America, but many also from around the world. The advantage of this tool is clear -- all links to particular stories are cross-referenced with EVERY other available article published about the same topic, updated every second. Here is why this matters:

Many newspaper articles originate with a news wire service, such as the Associated Press (AP). The AP writers are stationed around the world and submit articles (or parts of articles) to the central database at the home office. Newspapers from around the world then pay the AP for access to these stories. However, once an article is purchased by a local paper, it is modified for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes, a newspaper only has a certain amount of space to devote to the article, meaning that some of the AP stories are shortened or lengthened. New material may be added by local reporters or cobbled together from other AP feeds as well.

Some newspapers edit the articles for political reasons to appeal to their audiences. Therefore, the Washington Post (a liberal newspaper) will run a slightly different version of the article than the Washington Times (a conservative paper).If you only read one or the other, then you may be exposed to different facts, conclusions, and tones.

This forces good researchers to investigate alternative versions of news stories to ensure that the full story is revealed. This is what I will show you in the Polish President articles.

Another feature allows you to customize your Google News page. Google News provides several preset categories, but allows you 14 customizable keyword searches. You may want to customize your page by using search terms that pertain to what you will be exploring in your final class assignment that will ask you to follow a current news issue for two months

After you have customized your Google News page, take time to read as many articles as you can to follow your topics. You will soon be the leaders, so educate yourself about what is going on in the world.

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