<aside> ⌛ Estimated student time on platform: 70 minutes (+ blending)
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<aside> 🗣 Lesson host: Wesley Lowery, "60 in 6"
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<aside> 3️⃣ Difficulty level: 3 (for middle school, high school and higher education) This lesson contains descriptions/ graphic images of historical events that some may find disturbing.
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<aside> ✔️ Assessments: 5 total (1 auto-graded and 4 teacher-evaluable)
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<aside> 🗒️ Standards: This lesson has Common Core, ISTE, C3 and state-specific alignments. Find your standards in the Checkology alignments dropdown menu to learn more.
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Learning objectives:
Essential questions:
Background:
The press has historically, though imperfectly, served as a check on government and corporate power in the United States. This lesson builds on the learning outcomes of the “The First Amendment” by exploring the role that the First Amendment allows the press to play. By introducing students to iconic examples of watchdog journalists and their work, this lesson deepens students’ understanding of the outcomes and impact of the First Amendment on American society, both historically and today.
In each example, students will learn about an injustice that was exposed by watchdog journalism. Like the Supreme Court cases in “The First Amendment: Freedom to Express,” this one activates a variety of compelling social and political issues that can be explored in discussion or assigned tasks or projects.
The work of Nellie Bly — who in 1887 posed as a mental patient to report on conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum in New York City — raises enduring issues relating to mental health and gender inequity. In 1892, Ida B. Wells wrote her first articles exposing the horrors of lynching in America. Seymour Hersh’s reporting about the 1968 massacre of villagers by U.S. troops in Vietnam can open student inquiries into other examples of wrongdoing during wartime and fuel a search for other examples of investigative war reporting. In 2014, following an 18-month investigation, Richard Marosi and Don Bartletti took on powerful corporate interests by documenting unsafe working conditions, unethical payment practices and the brutal exploitation of child laborers at large produce farms in Mexico. Following up on the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, Wesley Lowery and other reporters from The Washington Post discovered that there was no nationwide database of police shootings — so they created one.
The last two series of reports — “Product of Mexico” and “Fatal Force” — can help students connect the work of Bly and Wells with the work of today’s investigative reporters. They also provide opportunities to discuss contemporary examples of political investigations, along with issues such as child labor, supply chains and corporate responsibility.
This lesson also includes a series of independent learning resources. Tell your students how much time they are expected to spend exploring them; if necessary, give them strategies and guidance that they might need to do so.
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