Explain the basic contours of the issue under consideration; contextualize the issue within a longer history and/or larger political significance; and compare coverage of the same issue among a range of media outlets.
In order to properly contextualize your issue, you should do further research to track how the issue has developed over an appropriate amount of time. Your response should demonstrate a knowledge of this historical trajectory. For some issues, that might mean tracking the development over a few months (e.g., how corona virus has impacted a certain country; how a given country has been affected by drops in oil prices, etc.); in others, it might require a longer arc (e.g., the development of civil strife in a country; tracking a certain human rights case/issue, etc.).
In order to produce an effective comparison, it is wise to select a diverse group of media outlets so that you can draw out the contrasts between the way different outlets cover the current event under consideration. It is important to consider news sources that span the political spectrum (your response should show awareness of this, so read widely to get a sense of outlets’ political leanings); and that they come from a range of geographical areas (to account for differences in political culture, etc.)
