What students learn. How to read a primary source in its own words first, then recognize how a news outlet's choices, what it puts in the headline, what it quotes, what it leaves out, and which words carry a judgment, shape what a reader believes happened. The goal is not to tell students what to think about any outlet. It is to give them a repeatable method they can apply to any source, on any topic, for the rest of their lives.
The method
Reusable on any statement or event:
- Read the source first. Go to the original document, statement, or eyewitness record before reading anyone's summary of it. Note what it actually says.
- Gather the coverage. Find two or three accounts of the same source from outlets with different viewpoints.
- Compare, line by line. For each account ask: What is in the headline? What is quoted directly rather than paraphrased? What is left out? Which words carry an opinion rather than a fact?
- Draw your own conclusion, and name the nudge. Write what you conclude from the primary source, then note where each account tried to move you, and how.
Compare these sources
Choose one or more pairs below. Read both sources in full, then work through the questions. There is no answer key. The comparison you build is the point.
For each pair, ask:
- What does each headline or opening line lead with?
- What is quoted directly, and what is only summarized?
- What does one account include that the other leaves out?
- Which words state a fact, and which carry a judgment?
- Reading only the sources, what do you conclude, and where did each account try to move you?
Pair 1. Kristallnacht, November 1938
The event: coordinated attacks on Jewish communities across Nazi Germany and Austria, on the night of November 9 to 10, 1938.
Source A. The Nazi-controlled German press, for example the Völkischer Beobachter, which presented the attacks as the spontaneous anger of the German public.
Source B. A foreign correspondent’s report from the same days, for example in the New York Times or the Times of London.
Find them: the New York Times archive (TimesMachine); Nazi-era press in the German History in Documents and Images collection; background at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Pair 2. The Kishinev pogrom, 1903
The event: a pogrom against the Jewish community of Kishinev, in the Russian Empire, at Easter 1903.
Source A. Russian government-aligned coverage, which downplayed the violence or blamed the victims.
Source B. Western and Jewish press reporting the scale of the killings, for example the New York Times of April and May 1903.
Find them: the New York Times archive; the pogrom is documented across major Jewish historical collections.
Pair 3. The Dreyfus Affair, France, 1890s
The event: the wrongful conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, for treason, and the long campaign to clear him.
Source A. An anti-Dreyfusard, antisemitic newspaper, for example Édouard Drumont’s La Libre Parole, which insisted on his guilt.
Source B. Émile Zola’s open letter J’accuse…!, published in L’Aurore on January 13, 1898, arguing that Dreyfus had been framed.
Find them: J’accuse…! is public domain and widely reprinted; French papers of the period are in the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s Gallica archive.
Pair 4. Antisemitism today, a current story of your choice
The patterns in the pairs above are not history. Antisemitism is reported, and framed, right now, in the same ways. Pick a current news story, about antisemitism or any contested event, find how outlets with different viewpoints covered it on the same day, and run the same questions. Start with a low-stakes story to learn the method before turning it on a charged one.
How to run it
10 minutes: introduce the method and the questions.
25 minutes: in pairs or small groups, students take one comparison pair, read both sources, and work through the questions.
10 minutes: groups share what they found.
Exit ticket: in three sentences, report the event using only what both sources agree on.
Responsible useThis lesson teaches students how to read a source. Charged or hateful primary documents, when studied at all, stay inside a scholarly frame with full context, the way this site's Contemporary Antisemitism and Racial Turn pages handle them. The method is never a host for extremist text.
StandardsC3 inquiry (evaluating sources and using evidence), Common Core close reading of primary and secondary sources, and the media-literacy strands in state ELA and social-studies frameworks. See Standards & Mandates.