Foreign News Source Report

Guidelines: Look through articles on the website: http://watchingamerica.com/WA/. Watching America is an online foreign news source that has numerous political, social, and economic stories of how the world understands the United States from their (foreign) perspective, rather than from an “American” view.  Select an article of your choosing (a topic you are interested in, ideally) about the United States (written about the U.S. from another country’s perspective and translated into to English if not already written in English).

(1) Select and read a recent article of your choice (translated in English). Assume the author’s role as a concerned citizen and brieflysummarize their position on the topic, while identifying any key values you think the author is emphasizing.

(2) Now switch roles to provide your assessments of any differences in the values presented in the article from an American. For example, what stands out about how the author views or presents the United States (or an issue in the the U.S.) and how in what ways does this perspective align with or diverge from how you think the issue is perceived by Americans? Make sure you provide your assessments in a balanced and realistic way, that takes into account the possible differences in values within the United States while making clear what American values are salient (you may again think about the list presented in Week 1 by Robin Williams and/or identify additional values you think are relevant. But you must clearly explain the value and why you think it is part of an American perspective). Explain whether you think it’s possible for a foreign author/newsperson to consider American Society in a relatively fair manner? Why or why not?

3) Conclude by evaluating how to envision other nations’ “typical” values, defining and using the cultural relativism perspective. If you need a quick and dirty explanation of cultural relativism, please read the first two (short) sections of the following resource (“What is culture?” and “What is Cultural Relativism”): https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/society-and-culture/culture/a/cultural-relativism-article