AJR in the Classroom
Discussion questions for the February / March 2005 issue, along with suggestions for further readings:


Story 1: Travels with Arnold  | Story 2: In Control | Story 3: Under Fire   | STORY 4: Deja Vu

Arnold / Courtesy Wikipedia.org and the governor's official Web site

STORY 1: "Travels with Arnold: Covering Arnold Schwarzenegger can be fascinating--and frustrating. The popular actor-turned-California-governor is a phenomenon, not simply a political figure. Critical stories that would cause big problems for most public officials are apt to find little traction outside the world of political insiders.” By Margaret Talev and Gary Delsohn

 

MORE INFO: For California political reporters, it's been a huge challenge satisfying readers' appetites for Schwarzenegger trivia while holding the governor accountable for decisions made in office. And at least one scholar worries that because covering such a celebrity gives the California press corps increased attention and visibility, it could cause reporters to pull their punches, "because they wouldn't want the act to close." 

 

RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT:

  • Ask students to do Web and/or LexisNexis searches for stories written by Los Angeles Times and Washington Post reporters during the six months preceding Schwarzenegger's October 2003 election, and the six months following it. In a 1,000-word paper, analyze and summarize the findings: How hard-hitting/investigative were the stories leading up to the actor's gubernatorial win? Please give specific examples of the types of stories covered (issues pieces/profiles/investigative stories/campaign finance pieces/breaking news/light features). How about after the election? In what areas, in your opinion, did the papers do well--meeting their journalistic obligation to inform and enlighten the electorate? In what areas did they fall short?


ADDITIONAL READINGS / RELEVANT LINKS:

  • "Covering for a Predator? Dismissive coverage of Schwarzenegger assault charges," by Laura Flanders, February 2004 issue of Extra!: The Magazine of FAIR.

  • "The Women: A behind-the-scenes, step-by-step look at how the Los Angeles Times put together its controversial, last-minute story about allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger had groped women without their consent," by Rachel Smolkin, December/January 2004 issue of AJR.

  • "Star Power: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s celebrity status attracted massive media attention to California’s recall election, and not just in the Golden State. It also enabled the actor to cruise to victory while largely ignoring political reporters," by Rachel Smolkin, December/January 2004 issue of AJR.

  • "Caught in the Crossfire: Viewing journalism through an ideological lens," column by Rem Rieder,  December/January 2004 issue of AJR.

  • "Papers Couldn't Resist Schwarzenegger," by Michael Stoll, Nov. 24, 2003, in Grade the News: Evaluating Print and Broadcast News in the San Francisco Bay Area from A to F.

  • Comment: "Timing and the L.A. Times: A Journalistic Late Hit? How Quaint," Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2003.

  • "Hollywood Treatment: Strong-arming the Hollywood Press," by Neal Koch, Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 1991.

  • "Arnold Schwarzenegger and Celebrity Politics," by Brown University Professor Darrell M. West, on insidepolitics.org.

  • The governor's Press Room


STORY 2: “In Control: The Bush administration has perfected the art of tightly controlling information. And it has paid no price for its disciplined, on-message, my-way-or-the-highway approach. The press might want to get used to it--this may be the template for future presidencies." By Lori Robertson

MORE INFO: The president had held 17 solo press conferences as of Dec. 20 -- far fewer than the 44 that Bill Clinton and 84 that George H.W. Bush had held at comparable points in their terms. And one-on-one interviews are given stingily. Some reporters see the stonewall creeping into other federal agencies. Others say the more tightly the administration controls the message, the more sources surface.

CLASS ASSIGNMENT: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has an online FOIA generator that is designed to help reporters write letters requesting federal documents and information.  Ask students to draft and send off a letter, (submitting a copy to the teacher), requesting specific information that could be useful in a story. Throughout the semester, ask students to give updates on the government's responses to their requests. In lieu of individual letters, a class letter could be written.

ADDITIONAL READINGS AND DOCUMENTS:

 

 

STORY 3: "Under Fire: Journalists have been barraged by a spate of subpoenas to identify confidential sources and court decisions ordering them to comply. Investigative reporting could suffer if more ensue. Can the media fight back? Does the public care?" by Rachel Smolkin

MORE INFO: More than two dozen subpoenas have been issued over the past two-and-a-half years to obtain reporters' sources, notes or other materials. Some say the media need to do a better job of explaining why anonymous sources are so important.

CLASS DISCUSSIONS:

  • Invite a lawyer from your state press association to talk to your class about your state's shield law, and to highlight any cases from the last five years in which reporters were subpoenaed for their notes or sources. How did the reporters fare?
  • Ask an editor and a reporter from a local paper to come in to discuss their publication's policy on anonymous sources. Under what circumstances are unnamed sources allowed in stories? If they're limited, why? What information on sources must be divulged by reporters to editors? How well does the policy work? What type of legal counsel does the paper offer staff reporters if they are dragged into court?

 

ADDITIONAL READINGS / SUPREME COURT AND SENATE DOCUMENTS:

 

 

STORY 4: “Deja Vu: In an eerie echo of the past, the American news media have drastically underplayed genocide in Sudan's Darfur region just as they did a similar catastrophe in Rwanda a decade ago. But some individual journalists have done outstanding work.” By Sherry Ricchiardi

MORE INFO: According to Ricchiardi: "International news budgets, already slashed in most newsrooms, are more likely to be consumed by the war in Iraq and, to a much lesser extent, developments in Afghanistan." Some say American journalists are more likely to cover mass deaths if the victims are white. Others say U.S. coverage is light in in the Sudan because the issues are intractable and ongoing.

RESEARCH / CLASS ASSIGNMENTS:

  • Break the class into small groups and give students this homework assignment. Ask each group to do a LexisNexis search for stories from the past three months on the Sudan's genocide. One group should check stories in The Washington Post, another The San Francisco Chronicle, another Time magazine, another Newsweek magazine, another the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Students should print out and make a list of the stories they find, categorizing them as staff-generated or wire-generated, breaking news or enterprise reporting. They should also make notes on the substance of the content and be prepared to present their findings to the class, discussing if they think the publication has done a thorough job of covering the crisis or not.
  • For comparison purposes, this exercise could be repeated with the same publications and time frames, this time searching and making notes on stories on the war in Iraq. If there are vast differences in coverage for an individual publication, the class should discuss why this might be.
  • Ask a foreign desk editor and / or reporter from a daily newspaper in your region to come in to discuss how that paper is covering the crisis in the Sudan. How much manpower and ink is it devoting to coverage?

ADDITIONAL READINGS / RELATED LINKS:

  • "The Roots of the Strife," by Sherry Ricchiardi, from the February / March 2005 issue of AJR.

  • "Quitting Kabul: The U.S. media presence in Afghanistan continues to dwindle," by Kim Hart, from the February / March 2005 issue of AJR.

  • VOICES: "Hiding Death in Darfur: Why the Press Was So Late," by Kenneth H. Bacon, from the September / October 2004 issue of CJR.

  • "Bureau of Missing Bureaus: Although television networks have closed many of their expensive foreign outposts, executives say they can cover the world just as well by dispatching reporters from central hubs. But critics say the shuttered offices come at a steep cost to the public. What is the future for foreign news on TV?" by Lucinda Fleeson, October / November 2003 issue of AJR.

  • "Closer to Home: Long relegated to the margins, foreign news has experienced a modest resurgence since September 11. But much of the coverage has focused on the war on terrorism and the Middle East. Will the blackout return after the crises ebb?" by Stephen Seplow, July / August 2002 issue of AJR.


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Teachers' guide written by Chris Harvey, online bureau director at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism and former managing editor of AJR.
Published Feb. 2, 2005; additional items added Feb. 6, 2005. Photo added Feb. 9, 2005.

Copyright © 2005 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Permission is granted to freely print, for classroom use, up to 100 copies of the most up-to-date version of this document, as long as the document is not modified.