ESS assignment on authoritative news sources

The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice in evaluating and choosing authoritative and factual sources of news. This assignment is a make up for a class meeting I must miss (on February 7th) and worth five points extra credit for the class as a whole.

1. Pick a recent national news story.
2. Identify three comparable sources that cover the story around the same time period (within a day or two, more if it's a slow-moving story). 
3. One should be from a news outlet generally considered "serious," "mainstream," and independent, the other two should be from outlets that have a partisan slant. One of the two should have a right-wing slant, the other a left-wing slant.
4. Compare the three articles in a short essay of between two hundred and three hundred words. Explain how the different sources slant the news. What techniques do they use to spin their story to their biased audience?
5. Talk to me if you do not know how to choose the sources. (But part of the assignment is to research whether or not the sources are indeed generally considered biased.)
6. Submit the essay and the three sources. Submissions should be via email. Microsoft Word is probably the easiest software to write the essay in. You don't have to paste in your sources. You can use Word to "hot-link" sources and any other bibliography at the end of your essay (to hot-link, highlight, then use control-K or command-K in MS Word).

Due Friday 10th February via email