Monday / Tuesday December 5 /6 news perspectives

per·spec·tive

pərˈspektiv/

noun

a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a

 point of view.

"most guidebook history is written from the editor's

 perspective"

synonymsOur next step is integrating news stories with perspective, so as to have  a deeper understanding of how different news sources  handle a story. Is it possible to remain unbiased?   DIRECTIONS: 1.Open a word document  2.Below you will find three paired stories, labelled by number and letter.  ie.  story 1 a, story 1 b. 3.  Read each pair carefully, noting language usage and tone  4. Copy and paste the story titles into your word document 5. Write a comparison essay of approximately 100 words, that explains how each of the news sources handled the story. Use specific textual examples to support your analysis.  Finally, conclude with an evaluation of as to what extent the story was written objectively,  or has demonstrated bias. 6. Rubric: demonstrates accurate understanding of the articles; textual evidence;  evaluation of the two news sources and language conventions (grammar, spelling, syntax.) 7. There are three paired articles. DUE BY MIDNIGHT ON TUESDAY: OTHERWISE BY WEDNESDAY BY 3:00. STORIES 1a  Islamic terrorists kill at least 40 students in  attack on Nigerian college Islamic terrorists dressed in Nigerian military uniforms assaulted a college inside the  country Sunday, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in their dorms and  shot others trying to flee, witnesses say. "They started gathering students into groups outside, then they opened fire and killed  one group and then moved onto the next group and killed them. It was so terrible," one  surviving student, who would only give his first name of Idris, told Reuters. As many as 50 students may have been killed in the attack, which began at about  1 a.m. inrural Gujba, Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture, told The  Associated Press. "They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels, they opened fire  at them," he said. The extremists also torched classrooms. Nigeria State Police Commissioner Sanusi Rufai told Reuters that he suspected that  the terrorist group Boko Haram was behind the attack, but declined to elaborate. Boko Haram is aiming to establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria and has intensified attacks on civilians in revenge for a Nigerian military offensive against the group, Reuters  reports. Idi Mato said he could not give an exact death toll as security forces still are  recovering bodies of students mostly aged between 18 and 22. The Nigerian military has collected 42 bodies and transported 18 wounded students  to Damaturu Specialist Hospital, 25 miles north, said a military intelligence official, who  insisted on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press. The extremists rode into the college in two double-cabin pickup all-terrain vehicles and  on motorcycles, some dressed in Nigerian military camouflage uniforms, a surviving student,  Ibrahim Mohammed, told the AP. He said they appeared to know the layout of the college,  attacking the four male hostels but avoiding the one hostel reserved for women. "We ran into the bush, nobody is left in the school now," Mohammed said. Almost all those killed were Muslims, as is the college's student body, said Adamu Usman,  a survivor from Gujba who was helping the wounded at the hospital. Wailing relatives gathered outside the hospital morgue, where rescue workers laid out  bloody bodies in an orderly row on the lawn for family members to identify their loved ones. One body had its fists clenched to the chest in a protective gesture. Another had hands  clasped under the chin, as if in prayer. A third had arms raised in surrender. Provost Idi Mato confirmed the school's other 1,000 enrolled students have fled the college. He said there were no security forces stationed at the college despite government  assurances that they would be deployed. The state commissioner for education,  Mohammmed Lamin, called a news conference two weeks ago urging all schools to reopen and promising protection from soldiers and police. Most schools in the area closed after militants on July 6 killed 29 pupils and a teacher,  burning some alive in their hostels, at Mamudo outside Damaturu. Northeastern Nigeria is under a military state of emergency to battle an Islamic uprising  prosecuted by Boko Haram militants who have killed more than 1,700 people  since 2010 in their quest to install an Islamic state, though half the country's  160 million citizens are Christian. Boko Haram means Western education  is forbidden in the local Hausa language. Story 1 b  Nigeria College Shooting: Dozens Of  Students Shot Dead In Their Sleep POTISKUM, Nigeria — Suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the  dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching  classrooms, the school's provost said – the latest violence in northeastern Nigeria's ongoing  Islamic uprising. The attack, blamed on the Boko Haram extremist group, came despite a 4 1/2-month-old state  of emergency covering three states and one-sixth of the country. It and other recent violence  have led many to doubt assurances from the government and the military that they are winning  Nigeria's war on the extremists. Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture told The Associated Press  that there were no security forces protecting the college. Two weeks ago, the state  commissioner for education had begged schools and colleges to reopen and promised  they would be guarded by soldiers and police. Idi Mato said as many as 50 students may have been killed in the assault that began at about  1 a.m. Sunday in rural Gujba. "They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their  hostels. They opened fire at them," he said, adding that most victims were aged between 18 and 22. Soldiers recovered 42 bodies and transported 18 wounded students to Damaturu Specialist  Hospital, 40 kilometers (25) miles north, said a military intelligence official who insisted on  anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Two of the wounded later died, said Adamu Usman, a survivor from Gujba who  was helping at the hospital. President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the attack in a televised "chat with the media" Sunday  night, and questioned the motives of Boko Haram, which wants to impose Islamic law across  Nigeria. He said he wondered whether the victims were Muslim or Christian. Usman said almost all those killed were Muslims, as is the majority of the college's student body. Jonathan likened the assault to that on Nairobi's premier shopping mall last week, where Islamic extremists from Somalia's al-Shabab movement killed 67 civilians – but only after  allowing many Muslims to leave. Boko Haram has said some of its fighters  trained with al-Shabab in Somalia. Story 2 a  Last Gasp of the Climate Change Cult The United Nations, as forecast -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate or whatever -- has  predictably issued their latest report based on the hoax of man-made global warming, and they say  that it is getting warmer and that we are causing it.  I think it's a blatant, flood-the-zone technique.   We're not getting warmer.  For the last 15 years, it has not gotten warmer.  Everybody's running  around in the global science community saying, "Global climate change," trying to explain  why it hasn't warmed.  They're using, "Well, it's been hurricanes, volcanoes, Sahara dust and so forth."  I don't know, folks.   We live in an era where nothing is real except the nothing. The real nothing is what's passed off as  real, and what is real is mocked and laughed at, made fun of and discarded.  Algore, four days ago,  called for making climate change denial a taboo.  Algore said, "There needs to be a political price for  climate denial."  A political price? Now, remember, we have a Constitution, and there is in the Constitution the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments.  One of them, the first one, is freedom of speech -- and specifically political speech  was singled out as protected.  Global warming is a political issue, and if you doubt that,  the very people pushing it are all political people, be they scientists or otherwise.   But Algore is a politician.  He's not a scientist.  He has no formal scientific training.  He never has had.  He's a politician.  The number one advocate for global warming is a politician, and here's a guy now who has made  millions, multiple millions of dollars scaring people with this big, fat lie.  It has been proven  to be a lie and untrue.  He has made millions off of this, and he's suggesting that anybody  who disagrees with him be punished, or outcast, or pay some kind of a price. Public  humiliation or a tax increase or something.  This is precisely the mental attitude of  dictators and statists who don't tolerate dissent. They want to criminalize dissent. They want to criminalize people that disagree with him.  Algore is  apparently not interested in entering the arena of ideas and winning debates with any of this, or any of the people that disagree with him.  "Within the market system we have to put a price on carbon,  and within the political system," he said, "we have to put a price on denial."  Do you believe this?   A price on denial! He said this at the Social Good Summit in New York City.  Algore said, "It is simply unacceptable for  major companies to mimic the unethical strategy of the tobacco companies in presenting blatantly  false information in order to protect a business model."  He added, alleging what some oil and coal  companies are doing, "There needs to be a political price for denial."  "He urged attendees to challenge denial of climate change in conversations in families and  communities and elsewhere. 'We can win this conversation and winning a conversation can make  all the difference,' Gore said. 'Don’t let denial go unchallenged.' Gore noted how racism and later  homophobia have become increasingly unacceptable." So now denying the politics of global warming  is akin to racism and homophobia, and it must be treated the same way.  Story 2 b  Humans almost certainly cause global warming, scientific panel says By Darryl Fears, Published: September 27  A panel of the world’s leading climate scientists strongly asserted Friday that “it is extremely  likely that human influence has been the dominant cause” of global warming since 1950 and  warned of more rapid ice melt and rising seas if governments do not aggressively act to reduce  the pace of greenhouse gas emissions. At a meeting in Stockholm, where the panel released its latest assessment of climate change, the  scientists for the first time established a budget for the amount of carbon that can be released into the atmosphere. Even if that target is reached, carbon emissions  will have a harmful impact on the environment well into the future. Graphic Little doubt humans are the cause of global warming, says IPCC report. “As the ocean warms, and glaciers  and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level  will continue to rise but at a faster rate than  we have experienced over the past 40 years,”  said Qin Dahe, a Chinese scientist who  co-chaired the working group that produced  the first of the report’s three segments, a  summary for government policymakers. “As a result of our past, present and expected future  emissions of [carbon dioxide], we are committed to climate  change, and effects will persist for many centuries even if  emissions . . . stop,” said Thomas Stocker, a German scientist who served as the other leader of the working group. Improved models The 2,000-page report of the Intergovernmental Panel on  Climate Change, appointed by the United Nations,  will not be available until Monday, following a weekend of editing and corrections.  But a summary highlighting 20 findings was provided early Friday. Some key findings were that the planet is warming at an  accelerated pace without any doubt, that humans are causing it with 95 percent certainty and that the past three  decades have been the hottest since 1850. Carbon concentrations in the atmosphere have increased 40 percent since then, and carbon,  methane and nitrous  oxide are at levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years. Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have steadily lost mass in two decades, and glaciers are shrinking worldwide.  Sea-level rise could reach three feet by 2100. The panel expressed high confidence in its findings because climate models that help scientists observe surface  temperature patterns have improved in the past six years, since its previous climate assessment. The current  assessment is the IPCC’s fifth since 1990. Scientists arrived at their conclusions by drawing on more than 9,000 publications. They considered more than  54,000 comments from about 1,050 people in 52 nations. Yet the summary did little to dissuade a small but forceful chorus of scholars who deny that humans cause  significant global warming or that Earth is suffering from warming effects. The Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group funded by individuals and corporations, denounced the IPCC’s findings  in a statement, citing a competing report called Climate Change Reconsidered II, released about a week ago by  the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. Consistent with the positions of the institute, which helped pay for it, the NIPCC found that “the human impact  on climate is very small, and . . . any warming that may be due to human greenhouse gas emissions is likely to be so small as to be invisible,” said the institute’s president, Joseph Bast. Story 3 a.: From The Des Moines Register Will GOP majority bring new abortion  restrictions to Iowa? Barbara Rodriguez, Associated Press For years, Iowa's divided Legislature shielded the state from a wave of  Republican-backed laws that restricted abortion access around the country. But a new GOP majority will take control in January, meaning nearly a dozen abortion-related  bills could soon be on the table, and Democrats will be unable to block them by vote for the  first time in a decade. "With these changes in Iowa, this can be when we start to really see a lot of abortion  restrictions fly through the Legislature," said Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst with the  Guttmacher Institute, a national organization that supports reproductive health and rights. It's been nearly 20 years since the GOP controlled both state chambers and the governor's  office. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has said he opposes abortion in general. After spending most of the last 26 years at the Capitol, former state lawmaker Chuck Hurley,  a spokesman for an anti-abortion organization known as the Family Leader, said he sees  this as the movement's "best opportunity ever to protect innocent human life." Iowa was one of at least three states where voters turned the government completely  Republican in the Nov. 8 election. The GOP widened its hold on governorships and maintained  a majority in Congress, in addition to gaining the power of the presidency with Donald Trump. Legislation in Iowa could reduce the window of time that a woman can seek an abortion and  ban the use of fetal tissue donated to universities for research. Other bills could force a woman to wait at least 24 hours before having an abortion or require  counseling about the procedure's health effects, which critics say can sometimes be inaccurate. In some states, women must be told about pain a fetus might suffer, and teenagers must get consent from a parent. Branstad signed a bill in the 1990s that required parental notification but not consent. He has  been public about his effort to appoint abortion opponents to a state board that unsuccessfully  tried to ban telemedicine abortion in the state. The practice allows women in  rural areas to get abortion pills without the need for an in-office consultation in a city clinic. Republicans have also repeatedly pushed to eliminate state funding for  Planned Parenthood, despite the money not being used for abortions. The issue has  delayed adjournment in previous legislative sessions. Because of its divided Legislature, Iowa was mostly shielded from measures that  emerged after tea party candidates won big in the 2010 midterm elections, including  in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and North Carolina. Between 2011 and 2016, more than 330 abortion restrictions were enacted around  the country, according to the Guttmacher Institute. GOP leaders in the Iowa House and Senate have been mum on what ideas they  might support. Republican state Rep. Greg Heartsill said he will try again to introduce legislation to ban  abortion despite the legal challenges that would be sure to follow.  His proposal includes a bill to change state law and an amendment to the state constitution.  He said he's still working to secure enough votes within his party. Jenifer Bowen of Iowa Right to Life said a new coalition of anti-abortion groups will  announce their legislative priorities before lawmakers return to the Capitol on Jan. 9.  She offered a practical assessment of a flat-out abortion ban, though she said that  has always been the ultimate goal. "We want to be successful with whatever it is that we decide to put forward because  we know the momentum is with us. We know that the votes are with us," she said.  "But I guess for a lack of a better way to say it, we don't want to overplay our hand." Rachel Lopez, a spokeswoman for the Iowa affiliate of Planned Parenthood, said her  office has noticed an uptick in calls from people concerned about their reproductive  rights in the new year. She declined to give specifics on how the organization would  respond to legislation but emphasized that nothing would change immediately. "We've been fighting for these rights for 100 years," she said of the national organization.  "The fight hasn't always been easy, but we are standing strong. We will not back down.  Today is no different." Story 3 B. from Vox News Roe v. Wade isn’t doomed under Trump.  But it’s not safe,  either. The landmark abortion-rights case probably, maybe,  won’t be overturned in the next four years. In the longer term,  it's complicated.  by Emily Crockett Donald Trump has promised that he would appoint Supreme Court justices  who would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that made abortion a  constitutionally protected right for American women. If he followed through on his promise, and if Roe were overturned, a woman’s right to abortion would depend on which state she lived in. After Trump won the presidential election, some observers started making  lists of all the things he would likely dismantle once he took office, Roe included: And news reports started talking about the likely demise of  Roe v. Wade and guaranteed abortion rights with Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices. But how likely is it that Roe will actually be overturned post-Trump? It’s a little complicated. The short answer is that Roe probably  wouldn’t be overturned in the next four years, and maybe never.  But depending on how many justices Trump gets to appoint,  and depending on which cases the Court decides to hear, Roe  could very well be in danger in the medium- to long-term. Why Roe v. Wade is probably (probably) safe Julie Rikelman, litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, put it plainly to Vox in an interview: “I do not believe that it is likely  that Roe v. Wade would be overturned,” she said. There are three major reasons for this, she said: The power of precedent “Roe v. Wade has now been the law of the land for over  40 years,” Rikelman said. “It has lasted through a number of anti-choice administrations, including those who vowed to put justices on the court that would overturn Roe v. Wade. And in those over 40 years, many cases have come up to the Supreme Court where there was a request for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, but it wasn't.” In other words, the Court has had opportunities to overturn Roe before. But it hasn’t taken them. And a key reason why, Rikelman said, is that “the institution of the Supreme Court gives a lot of weight to precedent and to something called stare decisis. And that means that when the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution and issued an opinion, that opinion is supposed to remain in place unless there are very, very, very, very good reasons for revisiting it.” There have been many Supreme Court justices over the years who personally oppose abortion. One of them is Anthony Kennedy, who is typically the “swing vote” between the liberal and conservative factions on the current Court. But Kennedy has voted to uphold abortion rights in two essential cases: 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which  many abortion opponents had hoped would be the case to overturn Roe, and this year’s Whole Woman’s  Health v. Hellerstedt, which gave pro-choice advocates a huge victory over restrictive state-level abortion regulations that are designed to force clinics to close. Casey, it’s important to note, did weaken Roe v. Wade. Under Roe, states couldn’t interfere at all with a woman’s right to choose before a fetus is viable, or roughly the third trimester. But after Casey, the courts ruled that states can regulate abortion at any point during pregnancy — as long as it doesn’t present an “undue burden” to a woman seeking an abortion. (This fuzzy standard has allowed some restrictions, like waiting period and parental notification laws, to stand. But Whole Woman’s Health made clear that some laws, like targeting clinics with absurdly restrictive building codes, go too far.) But with Casey the court still upheld the fundamental right to an abortion, and precedent is a key reason why, Rikelman said. It was because “decades of women had come of age and organized their lives with the understanding that they have this basic right to make personal decisions, and to control their own bodies, and to be able to  have jobs, and be able to participate in the social and economic life of the nation. That's how the Court talked about it.” Of course, anti-abortion justices also voted the other way and wrote dissents in those two pivotal cases, Casey and Whole  Woman’s Health. But the power of precedent is still a  significant barrier to overturning cases as long-lasting and  pivotal as Roe. Many justices over the years, regardless of their personal views  on certain issues, have said that “respecting precedent is a huge part of maintaining the integrity of the institution,” Rikelman  said. The alignment of the current Court After the death of conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia, and the refusal of Republicans in the Senate to hold hearings on President Obama’s proposed replacement Merrick  Garland, there are still only eight justices on the Supreme Court. That means Trump will probably appoint the ninth — and it’s probably safe to assume that that ninth justice will be an “ultra-conservative” who favors overturning Roe. But even then, Rikelman said, the Court still has a five-member  majority that clearly would not vote to overturn Roe: the four liberal justices and Anthony Kennedy, who recently voted with them in Whole Woman’s Health to strengthen abortion rights. If one of those five members retires or dies while Trump is in office, the balance could shift. But Rikelman said she believes the power of precedent would keep Roe standing even if Trump appoints two justices who are  committed to overturning it. The difficulty and rarity of actually getting the Court to  hear a case So let’s say Trump has appointed those two ultra-conservative  justices, and that all three of the other conservatives on the Court are willing to join them and set precedent on fire by overturning Roe v. Wade. They still need to hear the right case that will allow them to do  that. “A case can't just sort of show up two weeks from now at the Supreme Court that would allow it to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Rikelman said. “There are rules about when the Supreme Court takes cases, and it takes very, very few of the cases that come before it — a tiny percentage. And so it could be many years before a case even came in front of the Court that would give it the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade.” Generally speaking, the Supreme Court only takes a case if one of two things happen, Rikelman said. One is a “circuit split,” when two lower federal courts of appeals  disagree on an issue of law. That’s why the Court took up Whole Woman’s Health in the first place, Rikelman said. Every federal appeals court except one, the 5th Circuit Court, which governs Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, had struck down abortion restrictions that were similar to the ones Texas passed in 2013. So there was a conflict that the Court had to resolve, which it did — but it took three years after Texas  passed its anti-abortion laws for that ruling to come down. The other scenario in which the Court might step in is when a  federal law passes that gets challenged as unconstitutional. That’s actually a pretty likely scenario with a Republican-controlled Congress and Trump as president. Republicans in Congress have been trying for several years to pass a national 20-week abortion ban. It’s also very possible, given the latest anti-abortion lawmaking trends at the state  level, that Congress would try to pass a national ban on dilation  and extraction (D&E), the safest and most common method of performing a second-trimester abortion. A D&E ban wouldn’t explicitly outlaw second-trimester abortion, but the practical effect would be almost the same. Both of those laws would fly in the face of Roe because they would ban abortion, either outright or effectively, before a fetus is viable. So either of those laws would probably be challenged. Even in this circumstance, though, “the cases do not necessarily move that quickly through the courts,” Rikelman said.  “The application can take a long time.” Why Roe v. Wade might be in trouble Jessica Mason Pieklo, a constitutional law expert and legal  analyst for the reproductive rights news site Rewire, agrees with everything Rikelman said about precedent, the Court’s current pro-choice majority, and the barriers to actually getting the Court to hear a case. For all of these reasons, Mason Pieklo agrees that Roe will probably be fine in the short term. But longer-term, she’s less optimistic that Roe will ultimately survive a Trump-appointed  Supreme Court intact. “Roe is under threat, both directly and indirectly,” she said. The key thing to understand is that Roe v. Wade doesn’t have to be directly overturned for its protections to become meaningless. We’ve already seen hints of what this looks like in states like Texas that regulated abortion out of existence in  certain areas, or states like Mississippi where regulations are so stringent that there’s only one abortion clinic left in the entire  state. But from a national perspective, take the example above where Congress passes a 20-week abortion ban or a D&E ban and Trump signs it, Mason Pieklo said. Pro-choice advocates have two options if that happens. They  can either let the law go into effect and see abortion rights or American women be dramatically reduced nationwide — or they can challenge the law at the Supreme Court. But if Trump  gets the five-plus member ultra-conservative majority he’s  angling for, a challenge like that could either be very risky, or doomed from the start. To further complicate matters, Mason Pieklo said, it’s possible  that either of those anti-abortion laws, a 20-week ban, or a D&E ban could be upheld under Casey’s lower standard without actually overturning Roe. In that scenario, women would still nominally have a right to  abortion in America. But if a 20-week ban is upheld, that would mean that if a woman discovers a devastating fetal anomaly at her 20-week ultrasound, she’d have to leave the country to end the pregnancy. And if a D&E ban is upheld, if a woman doesn’t find out that she’s pregnant until she’s more than 12 weeks along or can’t  get the money for an abortion together until then, she would need to find a doctor willing to perform an abortion procedure that puts her at unnecessary risk, which might require crossing state lines. Or she would have to leave the country. Or she would just be out of luck. So in a nutshell, abortion rights aren’t doomed for sure after  Trump becomes president. But they are by no means safe.

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