REPORTING ON WAR IN THE 21st CENTURY
Critical Analysis
By Lisa Greeves , English and Journalism teacher

Overview:
How will reporters cover the first major war of the 21st Century? How will news accounts differ and compare? Will readers be able to deduce new reporting guidelines and trends just from reading or listening to war coverage? This activity will guide teachers and students through analysis of initial war coverage, provide basis for in-depth class discussion of reporting techniques and dilemmas, and offer links to insightful Web sites that contain relevant war reporting information.

Students will:

1. Review the components of a news article and lead
2. Review interviewing strategies, sources, and ethical concerns involved with general reporting
3. Identify the main elements of a news article in selected examples
4. Discuss observations and comparisons
5. Write a reaction to an extension reading

Time: If you choose to analyze newspaper articles, newsmagazine articles, and online articles, devote a 90 minute class session to each category.

Materials:

Correlation to National Standards

Procedure:

1. Review with students the main components of a news article and some important elements of reporting in general: the difference between hard and soft news, news lead, inverted pyramid, attribution, in-depth reporting, sources, press conferences. See Handout #1 for discussions of relevant terms.

2. Provide students with copies of Handout #2, Pentagon Pool Reporting Information, and Handout #3, New York Times' Reporting Philosophy. Have students read these two handouts prior to step 3.

3. After reviewing these concepts, pass out copies of three different articles covering the initial days of the war from three different newspapers. Have students read each article silently. If time and preparation permit, you may want to assign the reading of these articles for homework.

4. After students have finished reading, have students brainstorm silently for 10 minutes in their notebooks the similarities and differences that they can see in the three articles.

5. Share as a class the students' observations of similarities and differences in the news articles. You may want to write their observations on the board in two different columns labeled "Similarities" and "Differences". For instance, students might point out that all two articles contain the same quote, that one particular source appears in all three articles, that certain details appear in all leads or that one article included more analysis than the others or that all three articles arranged the information in different order from most to least important.

6. Lead a discussion of more specific points about these articles. Encourage students to discuss as a class each of the following:

A. The lead: Is each lead a straight news lead or something different? Identify the who, what, where, when, why, and how of each lead, if possible.

B. Listing of information: does each article follow the inverted pyramid? Go through each article and list together the order of importance of the information as it appears. Do you agree with the order in which the information is presented in each article or do you think anything needed to be ordered differently? Does the order of each account differ any from each other?

C. Sources: how many different sources are used in each article? Do any share the same sources? Are the sources relevant and knowledgeable? Do they provide good quotes? Are there any anonymous sources? What is the effect on the information that a particular anonymous source provides?

D. Quotes: How many direct quotes does each article provide? Are they strong, revealing, informative quotes or vague, unquoteworthy quotes? How many indirect quotes appear in each article? Do they reveal strong information or not?

7. Finally, ask students to determine if any of the information seems to have been derived from pool reporting or from a press conference. Does any of the information seem to have resulted from the actual legwork or reporting of the specific reporter(s)? How do they react, as readers, to each type of information? Return to the ideas from Handouts #2 and #3. After having read the Pentagon's guidelines for reporting and the NYT's reporting guidelines, how to they react to what they've seen so far in these first examples of war reporting? Do reporters seem to be following these guidelines or not? Can students cite specific proof from the articles?

8. For homework, provide students with a copy of Handout #4, "Battlefield Bylines", a discussion of how reporting in this war will be conducted. Have students read it and write a response to it. Students should react in two ways to this article. They should detail how these new practices and new guidelines for this war will affect them as readers. How will they react, as a reader, if they get a sense that the reporters are holding back on sensitive information that they may have seen firsthand, for example? Are there other controversial points that they would agree with or disagree with as readers? Students should also react to these new practices and guidelines as budding reporters. What is their reaction to the "embedding" of journalists in the combat units? Do they feel that they are going to be able to report better or not and why? What do they think will really happen to the reporter out there on the combat field with the unit commander and the troops?

Extension Ideas:

Assign students to analyze three different articles on the initial days of war from three different newsmagazines and three different online news sources. Address the same criteria as assigned in this activity, but begin by discussing

1. the definition of "in-depth reporting" as it applies to newsmagazines and
   
2. the immediate nature of online news and the audience it serves.

You should devote a 90-minute class discussion to each category. If you choose to do this extension, you might want to save step 7 from the main activity until you finish analyzing all three types of articles.

National Standards:

National Council for the Social Studies

Standard V: Individuals, Groups and Institutions
Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of interactions among individuals, groups, and institutions.

MCREL

Standard VI. Power, Authority and Governance
Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of how people create and change structures of power, authority, and governance.

Author Lisa Greeves has taught high school English and Journalism classes for two Virginia school systems: Fairfax County Public Schools and Rockbridge County Schools. She has a bachelor's degree in English and Communication from James Madison University and a Master's Degree in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. She recently had a chapter published in the 2002 NCTE publication Applying NCTE/IRA Standards in Classroom Journalism Projects.

To find out more about opportunities to contribute to this site, contact Leah Clapman at extra@newshour.org.