News, and news sources, are critical to the way we see the world. How do we determine if a news source is credible and the information is both thorough and accurate? This assignment challenges students to compare online articles about the same criminal justice-related or ethics-related issue from sources that fall into loosely “liberal” and “conservative” websites and which show distance difference in coverage. The assignment combines digital literacy (findings and identifying articles on the same topic from two discrete sources) and critical thinking (analysis of the impact that biased information may have on readers). The final version of the assignment is an expansion of the directions outlined above. You will NOT submit an outline, INSTEAD, in a narrative format, the student should briefly explain the subject of the articles, the areas of commonality, and the substantive differences in their coverage. The student should then address the impact that reading only one of the two articles might have on the average reader. Will the reader fully knowledgeable about the issue? Finally, students should blend the information between the two articles into a complete and true explanation of the issue presented such that the reader is well and thoroughly informed. Students should ensure that copies of the two comparative news articles are included as part of the assignment, and not as an attachment to a separate document. The easiest way to do is maybe to combine the narrative and two sources into a single PDF.
