Sample Essay On News Assignment

This news article from the Washington Times describes the United States reactions to the current hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. The article says that John Kerry believes Russia is engaging in a “propaganda” campaign, which they have not used since the Cold War. He believes the Russian government is lying to their people about the motivations of their involvement in Ukraine. Kerry said that the US would not currently send weapons to Ukraine and help them fight off Russian revels, and just wanted to explain how Russia is not being honest about their intentions within the region. The United States currently stands on the side of Ukraine, in light of their recent military interactions with Russia (Chumley 2015).
The Washington Times is a conservative leaning journalistic source, although this article does not fully show this bias. The source for the article is a report written by the Agence France-Presse, which is the oldest news agency in the world. It is a reliable source, and this article is accurate in terms of reporting on what John Kerry said. However, the Russia-Ukraine confrontation is an issue which has been focused on more by conservatives than liberals, especially by Fox News, which is a source for other articles on this site. The article was written by Cheryl Chumley, who has established credentials as a journalist, and has been with the Washington Times digital editions for some time. Further investigation of this newspapers website confirmed this bias, as many of the opinion and political articles are promoting a right wing bias. There are articles questioning Obama’s respect of the constitution, promotions of conservative values, and articles ripping other prominent Democrats within America. Therefore, this is a conservative leaning newspaper.
This article relates directly relates to the Cold War because John Kerry specifically cites it in this article. According to the article, “Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I’ve seen since the very height of the Cold War (Chumley 2015).” This quote is equating what Russia did during the Cold War, to their current efforts in Ukraine. There is good reason for doing so, because these events are directly related. During the peak of the Cold War, the former USSR was engaged in massive territorial conquests. They expanded their countries borders, and influenced the governments of many nations who had close borders to them. In fact, at the height of the USSR, Ukraine was actually part of this empire, so they have close ties to Russia, especially during the Cold War.
Ukraine became an independent country in 1990, but they still have factions within their country that are still loyal to Russia and their government. In fact, many ethnic Russians still live within a section of Ukraine, known as Crimea, which is the area of military action this article is referring to. In March of 2014, Putin annexed Crimea, because he felt he needed to protect the Russians living there. Since Crimea is part of Ukraine, this obviously led to hostilities and military conflict. The reason Putin is doing this is directly because of the Cold War and the USSR former involvement with Ukraine. There are many different ethnic factions within Ukraine, and not everyone is loyal to the current Ukrainian government. This is all a result of the Cold War, and now John Kerry is accusing Russia of framing this illegal annexation using propaganda methods of the USSR.

Works Cited

Chumley, Cheryl. "John Kerry: Russia ‘lies to my face’ about military mission against Ukraine." The Washington Times, 25 Feb. 2015. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/25/john-kerry-russia-lies-to-my-face-about-military-m/>.
US Newspapers Online." US Newspapers. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.world-newspapers.com/usa.html>.
Hard Copy of Article
John Kerry: Russia ‘lies to my face’ about military mission against Ukraine
Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia has been engaging in a “propaganda” campaign — the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Cold War days — about its military mission against Ukraine and outright lying to the United States.
“Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I’ve seen since the very height of the Cold War,” he told lawmakers, Agence France-Presse reported. “And they have been persisting in their misrepresentations — lies — whatever you want to call them — about their activities to my face, to the face of others, on many different occasions.”
When asked if he thought Russia was lying on this count, Mr. Kerry said, “Yes,” AFP reported.
He went on: “Russia is engaged in a massive effort to sway nations, to appeal to them, reach out to them and fundamentally, tragically, sort of reigniting a new kind of East-West zero sum game that we think is dangerous and unnecessary, frankly.”
But he also patted Washington on the head for “doing a pretty good job of standing up for Ukrainian sovereignty,” he said, AFP reported.