english

Instructions

Paper One Assignment: Establishing the Fact

ENG 280

Y. Kozhukhova

It Aint What You Dont Know That Gets You Into Trouble. Its What You Know for Sure That Just Aint SoAnonymous

Context: Today, there are many matters of fact that we must do our best to establish in order to understand our world and how best to act in it. In this paper, you will establish if a given claim is or is not a fact. Matters of fact are not debatable issues of values or perspectives. In matters of fact, we should be able to come to a reasoned conclusion based on a critical, informed, and rule-governed assessment of the evidence for or against the claim. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the long-serving senator, once said You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. While we might disagree on how best to live or what constitutes a good life, we must be able to agree on the basic facts of the world that constrain us so that we have any shot at living together with different values and still collectively getting closer to truth. As a citizen of a democracy, we are charged to seek the truth in our civic participation. However, we never arrive at truth alone.

In this assignment, you will be a little like a member of a jury. You will research one of the claims below and determine if it is actually a fact. The people you will work with on this virtual jury are journalists, scholars, and sometimes scientists. Remember, like being a member of a jury for a trial, establishing the facts and getting closer to truth is a collective activity. Rather than working face-to-face with others, as we would on a jury, as writers we will read others and consider who they are (their authority to speak) and the rules of evidence (accuracy) that guide their statements. Thus, not only will we need to find people that have the expertise to say something about the claim at hand, we also need to be sure that we understand how each of the people we read is committed to rules of evidence that make what they have to say trustworthy.

Finally, with any claim of fact, we need to establish the truth to the best of our critical and analytical abilities. While this can sometimes mean simply proving a statement of fact is untrue, sometimes the way a fact is stated is misleading, and we require context and nuance to understand what really happened. It may be that part of your paper is providing that context and nuance.

Assignment: Research one of the following claims (if you would prefer to research a different claim of fact, email your professor immediately to ask for approval for an alternative claim. Remember, though, we are investigating matters of fact not matters of values, and the fact needs to be small and clear enough to fit in a short paper. Climate change, for instance, is too big a topic with too many facts at stake for this short assignment). Using the sources from your research, determine if the claim made in the linked story here is true, false, or needs nuance and context to distinguish what is true or false in it.

• 3 million illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election.
• Hillary Clinton had Seth Rich kidnapped and then killed. or
• The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago to search for classified documents was really a failed assination attempt on former president Trump:
• Donald Trump is a secret Russian agent.
• In 2019, boys from Covington Catholic school mobbed and insulted a Native American man on the National Mall in Washington D. C.
• Jets at high altitudes are spraying dangerous chemicals, called “chemtrails,” on people.
• Missiles, not planes, crashed into and destroyed the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11.
• The Denver International Airport is the headquarters of the Illuminati group and is built over secret bunkers that will survive the apocalypse.
• The COVID-19 virus was engineered as a Chinese bio-weapon.
• The 2017-2018 California wild fires were started by government operated lasers or directed energy weapons.
• The company Ecto-Life runs a massive artificial womb facility producing 30,000 new babies every year:
• President Joe Biden asserts that the Equal Rights Amendment is the “law of the land now,” thus becoming the most recent amendment to the U.S. Constitution and changing laws on gender throughout the county:

Source Requirements: In this assignment, you must analyze, quote from, and cite the following numbers and kinds of sources. Your task is to understand where the original claim comes from, and then use a range of highly reliable and diverse sources to confirm, disprove, or add context and nuance to the claim in the original source.

1. The linked source from the topic above. In your paper, first, establish the claim of fact made in the link above and analyze the source it comes from. You must quote from the source in the above link to establish the claim of fact being asserted. How credible is that source? Be sure to include this source as the first example in your paper and on your works cited page and CRAAP test annotations.
2. Four journalism sources. Confirm, refute, or add nuance to the claim by researching, reading, and quoting from a variety of highly reliable newspaper and magazine stories. You must use at least four articles from prestige press newspapers or magazines (note, it must be reporting, not an editorial or opinion piece). Consult the Media Bias chart to help identify the prestige press.
3. Forbidden sources: You can NOT use any sources from television network news channels and their associated websites (CBS, ABC, FOX, MSNBC, etc). You can NOT use any sources associated with a cable channel, such as biography.com, history.com, etc. Use high quality prestige press newspapers and magazines for your research.

To find the four sources you will use, work with the Malpass library database sets, and look for those that include newspapers and magazines. The best place to begin is with Academic Search Complete. You can also use databases like Access World News, and Reader’s Guide Abstracts. You can find these and many others here : ?

Additional Sources: For some topics, you might want to add an extra source in addition to your four journalism sources. In addition to the four prestige press journalism articles, you can also choose to include one additional source from two different categories: the expert source or a peer-reviewed source.

• Expert sources are often in the form of books published by academics or others from reputable publishers, but they are generally not peer-reviewed. They might also be sources from official government agencies, like the Centers for Disease Control, or sometimes from a large institution, like a university research center webpage. Sometimes scholars publish their work as “pre-prints” before undergoing peer-review. If you use such a source, you must be more vigilant than ever in understanding the claim to expertise and applying the CRAAP test.
• Depending on your topic, you might also want to use a peer-reviewed source. Peer-reviewed sources are published in academic journals and books. They are authored by credentialed experts and must pass rigorous peer-review by other experts in the field before they are published.

Strategies: If you feel stuck, talk to your professor, or head over (virtually, by phone, text, etc) to the University Writing Center ( or Malpass library and chat with a librarian.

Works Cited Page and CRAAP Test Annotations

1. You must have an MLA works cited page with complete MLA style citations for every source you include in your paper.
2. Each citation must be annotated with a complete CRAAP test that includes Ad Fontes Interactive Media Bias Chart scores for bias and reliability.

Format and Other Requirements:

1. Your paper must be at minimum three pages of body text, not including the works cited list and CRAAP test annotations.
2. Any statement of fact in the paper must be tied to a source that appears on your works cited page. You should use a mix of brief quotations and parenthetical references. Do not include any information in your paper that is not present in the sources on your works cited page.
3. You must use at least one quotation from any source you include in the paper. Think of quotation as salt and pepper: a little makes the whole thing much better. Too much ruins it. Find a balance. Use brief quotations, from a phrase to a sentence, to add emphasis and clarity to your paper.
4. Your paper must follow MLA style, be neatly typed in readable font of 11 or 12 points, and be submitted as an MS Word document. (.doc or .docx). Upload the file directly to the assignment on Western Online.
5. Give your paper an original and interesting title that also suggests its focus.

Due Dates: Check the course calendar for the due date.

Paper One Grading Rubric

The A Paper Will do the following:

• Have a brief introduction that states the topic of the paper and the authors purpose.
• Establish the claim of fact under investigation with a clear summary of the linked source from the assignment sheet.
• Use high quality and highly relevant journalism sources that establish the fact.
• Mix highly reliable sources from the political right and the political left to account for bias.
• Tie every statement of fact in the paper to the source it comes from in your research.
• Use brief tags and introductions so the reader knows where any given information is coming from, i.e., According to Jane Smith, writing for the New York Times, quote (Smith). Or, using clear paraphrase: According to John Doe, writing for The Dispatch, this is the fact (Doe).
• Use effective organization to lead your reader through your research, including strong paragraphing, transition sentences between paragraphs, strong topic sentences to keep your reader oriented throughout the paper as you present the information.
• A works cited page with clear and correct MLA citations and hanging indentation.
• Well-developed CRAAP tests that establish the source across the categories and include Ad Fontes scores for bias and reliability.
• A brief conclusion that restates the purpose of the paper, briefly reviews the key information, and makes clear the judgement of the author on this question of fact.
• The whole paper will show that the writer has a complete and factually accurate understanding of the topic, and that the writer is able to communicate the story and the correct judgement about the fact to the reader with a well-developed and well-organized explanation.

The B Paper Will do the following:

• Have a brief introduction that states the topic of the paper and the authors purpose.
• Establish the claim of fact under investigation with a clear summary of the linked source from the assignment sheet.
• Use high quality and highly relevant journalism sources that establish the fact.
• Tie every statement of fact in the paper to the source it comes from in your research.
• Use brief tags and introductions so the reader knows where any given information is coming from, i.e., According to Jane Smith, writing for the New York Times, quote (Smith). Or, using clear paraphrase: According to John Doe, writing for The Dispatch, this is the fact (Doe).
• Use effective organization to lead your reader through your research, including strong paragraphing, transition sentences between paragraphs, strong topic sentences to keep your reader oriented throughout the paper as you present the information.
• A works cited page with clear and correct MLA citations and hanging indentation.
• Well-developed CRAAP tests that establish the source across the categories and include Ad Fontes scores for bias and reliability.
• A brief conclusion that restates the purpose of the paper, briefly reviews the key information, and makes clear the judgement of the author on this question of fact.
• The whole paper will show that the writer has a strong and factually accurate understanding of the topic, and that the writer is able to communicate the story and the correct judgement about the fact to the reader with a clear and well-organized explanation.

The C Paper Will do the following:

• Have a brief introduction that states the topic of the paper and the authors purpose.
• Establish the claim of fact under investigation with a clear summary of the linked source from the assignment sheet.
• Use credible and reliable journalism sources that establish the fact.
• Tie every statement of fact in the paper to the source it comes from in your research.
• Use brief tags and introductions so the reader knows where any given information is coming from, i.e., According to Jane Smith, writing for the New York Times, quote (Smith). Or, using clear paraphrase: According to John Doe, writing for The Dispatch, this is the fact (Doe).
• Use effective organization, particularly strong paragraphing, to lead your reader through your research.
• A works cited page with clear and correct MLA citations.
• Adequate CRAAP tests that establish the source across the categories and include Ad Fontes scores for bias and reliability.
• A brief conclusion that restates the purpose of the paper, briefly reviews the key information, and makes clear the judgement of the author on this question of fact.
• The whole paper will show that the writer has a factually accurate understanding of the topic, and that the writer is able to make and communicate the correct judgement about the fact to the reader.

The 0 paper. A Paper will receive zero points and must be revised if it has some mix of the following problems:

• Inadequate sourcing. This might include missing required sources, using prohibited sources, or using unreliable sources.
• The paper is not grounded in brief quotations and parenthetical references.
• The author does not tie the claims of fact to the sources on their works cited page. The paper includes information that the reader cannot link to any source or comes from sources not listed on the works cited list.
• The author does not use quotations and parenthetical references to link information to the sources.
• Lacks or has only a partial works cited page with clear and correct MLA citations.
• Lacks or has only partial CRAAP tests that establish the source across the categories and include Ad Fontes scores for bias and reliability.
• The whole paper may show that the writer does not have a complete and factually accurate understanding of the topic, and that the writer is not able to communicate the story and the correct judgement about the fact to the reader with a well-developed and well-organized explanation.