ZENIT- The World seen from Perspective of Rome

This outlet provides information on the activities of the Pope, interviews with men and women from the Catholic Church, international news and current social, political and religious topics that are under debate. Many professionals and volunteers that work for ZENIT also work for the church or their work is closely related to the church.
The article that I read today was essentially a summary of the U.S. State Department 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practice published on February 25th. It highlighted different countries and areas of concern that were mentioned in the report. The article opened with the news that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. The leader of Sudan is accused of being responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people in the Dafur region during the recent conflicts.
This article contained a separate section at the end that discussed religious rights in the world, or lack there of. This section, along with the fact that the writer of this article is Father John Flynn, could be considered the distinguishing characteristics of news distributed from ZENIT. Choosing to include religious discrimination, and the persecution of Christians may not have been the same choice made by other news outlets.
ZENIT has a defined intended audience and while the news seems varied, current, and valuable, it certainly has a focus- the social and political issues in relation to the Catholic Church.

Here is a list of the Italian news outlets that I will be focusing on for this project. I picked out a few that cover a variety of issues from different perspectives. I plan to use these media outlets as my main source for analysis and comparison about current events in Italy and around the world.

-Andkronos International (AKI) is an independent news agency that is focused on information exchange, research and dialogue between Italy, Europe and the emerging areas of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/hp/

-Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) is a national news agency that is made up of 36 members who are editors of major Italian newspapers who share the common goal to publish and distribute the news.
http://www.ansa.it/site/index.html

-LaSpecula.com is a multilingual online newspaper that provides news from all over the world. The website is divided up by region, covering events in Africa, America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
http://www.laspecula.com/

-Football Italia is an offifial website for English-speaking fans of Italian football. It includes coverage of the players and the games as well as statistics and programming information.
http://www.channel4.com/sport/football_italia/index.html

-Only in Italy.com is a compilement of news stories from Italian publications that are funny and/or ironic. The makers of this website do not exploit outrageous stories from tabloids or sensational broadcasts. They cite that they only translate stories from mainstream daily newspapers.
http://www.onlyinitaly.com/index.html

-ZENIT News Agnecy is an outlet that attemps to view current events through the messages of the pope and the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. Their purpose is to inform the public about the topics, debates and events that are especially interesting to Christians worldwide.
http://www.zenit.org/index.php?l=english

As you can see, some of the sites I picked are just for fun. I have an interest in soccer and it will be fun for me to follow an Italian football news outlet. Also, I like seeing some humor in everything I do, and I think that reading some ridicuous real published articles will be fun.

The other news services I listed are for comparison purposes. I will utilize them to see how different view points determine what story is the lead, or what adjectives are used or if there is any obvious bias among the outlets. It will be interesting to see which outlets decide what events to include and focus on or to leave out of their publication entirely.