Your editorial will need to be 2-3 pages long, and double spaced. A bibliography is required for this assignment, and you will need at least 5-6 resources to be considered for a passing grade. Topics are due Wednesday, April 14th, sources and preliminary outline are due Thursday, April 15th, and rough drafts will be due on Monday, April 19th. Final drafts are due Wednesday, April 21st.

Class Resources :

(Assignment #2) Once you’ve completed your timeline, you should prepare for our “tribunal” regarding Haiti by selecting a character, and researching their past. After you have selected a character, and thoroughly developed them as a entity, you should submit a brief character analysis that includes your character’s name, occupation, history in Haiti, and particular feeling about who’s the most responsible for the current tragedy befalling the Carribbean nation.

(Assignment #3) Assuming you participated in the “tribunal” please post answers to the following questions as comments to this post.

1. Was your character easy or difficult to obtain information on? And, why do you think that is?
2. Did you identify or side with your character, or did your character act in a manner that was outside your comfort zone? Explain.
3. What did you learn about your character through this process?
4. What did you learn about the other characters through this process?
5. In our deliberation, who had the most to say, and who was left out of the process? Do you think that our classroom dynamic represented the real world, in terms of who had the most voice?
6. Did you agree with the final verdict reached by the jury? Why / why not?
7. What do you see as the point of this activity?
8. What could’ve made the activity better or worse?

To do this, you will need to find at least 2 articles from national sources and at least two from international sources that have different perspectives on the event. Once you have selected the articles, and analyzed them for their particular bias, you will write your own article about the event that includes information from all four of the articles.

Your piece will need to have a headline, a byline, and at least two quotes about the event which should come from your four articles. These pieces will be shared in class on Monday, November 2nd, and will need to be submitted in their final form by Wednesday, November 4th.

ROUGH DRAFTS : November 2nd

FINAL DRAFTS  :  November 4th

1. Who were the key players in the Bush administration that helped orchestrate the war in Iraq, and how many of them had any military or post-war reconstruction experience?
2. Who is Ahmed Chalabi, and what role did he play during the lead up to war? What role did he play during the reconstruction?
3. What was the name of the group put in charge of reconstruction in Iraq, and how long did they have to plan before their efforts were needed?
4. What was the U.S. reconstruction headquarters called? Where was it located in Baghdad? And, how did it differ from the U.N. compound?
5. What were L. Paul Bremmer’s three major “mistakes” during the reconstruction effort, and who approved them? What were some of the direct consequences of Bremmer’s three “mistakes”?
6. In the absence of state power or martial law, widespread looting, kidnapping, and other serious crimes took hold of Baghdad, and the insurgency was allowed to grow. Could this have been prevented? How?
7. Which is largest group of insurgents in Iraq, and what is their relationship to other insurgent groups?
8. After watching this film, what, if anything, could the U.S. and its allies done better during the war and its ensuing aftermath?

DUE : Tuesday, October 27th

1. In the film, we learn that CENTCOM is reporting on activities in and around Baghdad, while they were actually based in another country (Qatar), nearly 700 miles away from Baghdad. Thinking critically, can a media outlet truly gather the information necessary to report on an event from that distance? And, can/should the public trust information that is coming directly from the military? What, if any, fact checking was done before journalists broadcast information relayed to them by CENTCOM?
2. Al-Jazeera was criticized by Donald Rumsfeld and others for their broadcast of images depicting injured civilians and soldiers. Do you think that this criticism is fair? Aren’t these images part of the story when you’re covering a war? Give your opinion.
3. It is pointed out in the film that Americans see little to no correlation between the Iraq War and the Israeli / Palestine conflict, while the Arab world sees the two instances as intrinsically related. Why do you think that such disparity exists?
4. On the day that coalition forces were to enter Baghdad, CENTCOM filled the airways with the story of Private Lynch’s “rescue”. After reading or watching this piece from the NewsHour, why do you think that this story led on a heavy fighting day?
5. Knowing that Al-Jazeera gave their exact locations to the U.S. and U.K. forces before the invasion of Baghdad, what is your opinion of the deaths of the Al-Jazeera journalists? Was it purely an accident on behalf of the Coalition Forces, or was it a deliberate attack meant to send a clear message to news media that reported beyond what they were told by CENTCOM?
6. Finally, the Iraqi Information Minister told Al-Jazeera to stop broadcasting “American propaganda”, while George Bush said that the news outlet was “the mouthpiece of Osama Bin Laden”? Which of these accusations is closer to the truth, in your opinion?

DUE : Monday, October 19th

Articles should come from different sources. One article should come from a corporate news source originating in the U.S., U.K., France or Israel. One should come from the Middle East, either from Al-Jazeera or an Iranian newspaper, preferably. One should come from China or Russia, and the last should come from an alternative news source from either the U.S. or U.K.

Once you have found all four articles, you shall make a grid that is four columns wide (one for each article), and seven rows down (one for each of the following questions).

Insert the following questions into your grid:

1. Is the byline of the article from Iran? (If no, where is it from?)
2. How many people were in this piece? (If none, skip #3)
3. Were the people cited / quoted balanced in terms of their perspectives?
4. Does the headline demonstrate objectivity?
5. Does the body of the article demonstrate objectivity?
6. If no, what words demonstrate the author/publication’s bias?
7. Place an “X” underneath the article that demonstrate the best journalistic practices?

Underneath the graph, explain why you chose to put the “X” beneath the article you did.