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: U.N. Releases List of Top Ten Stories that Need More Media Attention: 5/03/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/un_5-03.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What news stories do you think are missing and should be covered?

2. How do you determine what is a good news story or issue that people around the world should know about?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What did the United Nations' Department of Public Information release recently? Why?

The ongoing occupation of Iraq and the violence there has been the focus of much of the media's attention, forcing many important news stories to "slip off the radar screen," according to the United Nations, which announced a list of the top ten stories that merit more attention.

In an effort to draw attention to these less-covered stories, the United Nations' Department of Public Information released the list, dubbed "Ten Stories the World Should Know More About."

2. What are the stories on the top ten list?

The stories outlined on the list include humanitarian emergencies -- such as the crisis of children orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and the condition of child soldiers in Uganda -- and post-conflict situations like Tajikistan's road to peace following a deadly civil war.

Other highlighted stories include:

· The tenuous peace in the Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest countries
· The growing strain on U.N. resources needed to maintain peace throughout the world
· The vital role that women play in achieving peace and rebuilding societies, for example in Rwanda
· A potential treaty to promote the rights of people with disabilities
· The role of the International Court of Justice in solving border disputes such as the one between Cameroon and Nigeria
· How overfishing is depleting marine biodiversity
· Why some indigenous peoples in the Amazon face extinction as their land disappears

3. Which story on the list is most important?

Officials were careful to point out the list does not represent the main issues before the United Nations and the order of the stories was not mean to reflect its importance. The first story is merely "the first among equals," according to Tharoor.

4. How many child soldiers are in Uganda? Why are children acting as soldiers?

In addition to the effect the fighting has had on refugees, almost 90 percent of the LRA is made up of children under the age of 18. Many of the fighters, who can be as young as 8, are abducted from their villages and forced to attack their fellow abductees or even family members. If they refuse, they are killed.

Officials estimate that over 30,000 children have been forced to be soldiers, porters or rebel "wives" since the 1980s. In the past 18 months alone, more than 10,000 children have been abducted.

5. What are some of the problems facing post-war Tajikistan?

Tajikistan continues to struggle with the effects of the war including high unemployment -- especially of former fighters, the spread of small arms, drug trafficking and the resurgence of extremist organizations.

6. How many AIDS orphans are in sub-Saharan Africa? How do they impact their communities?

The devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is most clearly represented in the 11 million AIDS orphans -- children orphaned because both of their parents have died of AIDS. Eight of every ten children who are orphaned as a result of AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa.

As a result entire communities fall deeper into poverty as already over-extended families must care for the well being of these orphaned children, according to U.N. officials. Orphans who cannot be helped by these communities are often forced to live on the streets where they are even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

Discussion Questions (more research might be needed):

1. According to Shashi Tharoor, undersecretary-general for Communications and Public Information, none of these stories is more important than any other. Do you agree? Why or why not? If you had to put them in an order of most important to least important, what would that ranking be? Explain your answer.

2. What do the stories on the list have in common? How are they different? Why do you think they are not being covered enough in the press, according to the United Nations?

3. Choose one of the top ten stories on the list and research it. Present the issue to your class. Note how important you think this story is before you research it and after. Has your opinion changed? Why or why not?

Send your answers, in essay form, to extra@newshour.org for possible publication!