Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Justice Department Launches Investigation Into White House Leak, 10/01/03
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec03/leak_10-01.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Does a reporter have the right to keep sources secret?

2. What is a reporter's responsibility to his or her sources?

3. What is the role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is the claim being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department?

The U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday that it would launch a formal investigation into claims that White House officials leaked the name of a CIA agent to newspapers in order to punish her husband, a former U.S. ambassador, for speaking out against the Iraq War.

2. What led to the charge Ambassador Wilson is making against the White House regarding Iraq?

In July, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times outlining his trip to the African nation of Niger in 2002. The purpose of his trip was to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to buy uranium, a nuclear weapon-making material, from Niger.

Upon his return, Wilson said, he reported that it was "highly doubtful" that Iraq had tried to buy the uranium from Niger. In his Times essay, Wilson questioned why President Bush then used the claim against Iraq to launch the war despite knowing the information was false.

3. Why do Democrats feel that Attorney General John Ashcroft should not lead the leak investigation?

Democratic members of Congress have asked for an independent counsel to lead the investigation, saying Attorney General John Ashcroft, who heads the Justice Department and is a Bush-appointed administrator, is unfit because of his relationship to the president.

"There is a real concern about objectivity," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

4. According to CIA analyst Larry Johnson, how could leaking the name of a CIA agent endanger her?

According to former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, leaking the name of a CIA employee puts her and the people she has come in contact with, in danger.

"She works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised," Johnson said. "When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised," he said.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Research the laws that protect journalists from revealing their sources. Do these laws still hold up in matters of national security? Should Robert Novak be forced to reveal the names of the White House officials who gave him the information about Ambassador Wilson's wife?

2. Can you think of instances when high school journalists might have to consider some of the issues raised by this story?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.