EFFECTIVE JOURNALISM: DICTATION OR OBJECTIVE REPORTING
Two articles, dealing with the recent lethal shooting–accident involving two six–year old children, exhibit a great number of differences when the writing is concerned. These differences influence their relative quality. When the two articles are compared it is the article of the Times which fails to satisfy the needs of a critical reader. First this article and then the article from the USA Today will be examined.
The title of the Times article, “That happens on television, says killer, 6”, starts out with blaming the boy’s easy access to violent tv–series and, consequently, television violence for the little girl’s death. A whole range of arguments supporting this issue can be put forward but it is neither part of the reach nor of the intention of this essay to investigate this topic further. The main body continues with a string of subjective arguments. First claiming that the boy’s teachers are incompetent; “His teachers had reported no problem with the child ‘outside the normal’, but other parents said the boy often got into fights”, and then accusing the school of negligence; “The school has security guards but no metal detectors”. This creates an overall atmosphere that conveys a certainty that is not at all part of the scope of the article since not all sides are given consideration nor is it in any way possible for the reader to assume that they were known to the authors.
When examined more closely, the bias the authors have against the boy’s upbringing and the people and surroundings involved in that upbringing is clearly established in the first paragraph with expressions lacking in objectiveness, such as: “known drug offender”, “slovenly crack house”, and ultimately, “a dead–end street full of dead–end lives”. This sets the tone for the remainder of the article which continues along the same lines, two examples that draw attention are; “A sign … read: ‘We love our children and we CARE for their safety’”, and “The area is mixed, black and white, (the boy was black) and the fortunes of its inhabitants are equally mixed”. The former has a strong ironic undercurrent when viewed in relation with the rest of the text and the latter puts an irrelevant emphasis on the black/white contrast. The article proceeds with quoting the victim’s grandmother, someone who is too emotionally involved in the case and can therefore not be trusted to make any rational statements on the incident. Furthermore, an attempt has been made to provide some background information but it is lacking in quantity, 6 lines, and in quality, since it ends the text with some unanswered questions.
At a first glance, the word “flophouse” in the title of the USA Today article suggests that the article will be similar to the Times article in terms of its subjective contents. The reverse, however, is true, nowhere in the article can overtly biased value judgements such as in the Times article be found, and the word “flophouse” comes from a cited prosecutor. Moreover, its use in the title is an eyecatcher, which appeals to feelings that potential readers are expected to have so as to induce them to read the entirety of the text.
The text goes on along a wholly different approach, that is to say, not explicitly laying the cause of the shooting anywhere but giving facts and relevant background information. Careful reading will expose that, in the author’s opinion, it is the surroundings that are to blame but nowhere is it stated so strongly or is it so negatively emphasised as in the Times. Next to that, it is repeated several times that the boy has no idea of the consequences of his pulling that trigger, “He is really a victim of a drug culture”, “You have to be old enough to form criminal intent”, “What he understood he did is another matter”, “I don’t think the boy…understands”, and, though very implicitly, “It’s very doubtful that a 6–year–old would meet that test”. This all contributes to creating an article that has about it an air of remote objectiveness that at the same time does not ignore the emotional part of the incident. Essentially, this gives the reader the opportunity to form a clear picture of the affair with only a marginal interference on the side of the author.
As far as background information is concerned the USA Today spends a third of the article on information not directly related to the incident, starting at “The tragedy of young killers”. It enlarges the newsworthiness of the article by linking it to events in the rest of the country, in addition, the article’s involvement of national politics with the accident makes it more interesting for readers that live outside the area. In short, the addition of background information helps the reader to get a more comprehensive view on a larger frame of events, such as the controversy surrounding adult prosecution of under–age offenders or laws dealing with stricter gun–control.
All in all, the information the Times article conveys has greatly been filtered and put into a pejorative wording that restricts the reader from reaching independent and rational conclusions regarding the issue. A newspaper, however, should take pains to remain objective and rely on its readers to draw their own conclusions. The Times article dictates its opinions to its audience and that is the main reason for its inferiority when compared to the article from the USA Today, which gives the reader the greater freedom of independent thinking.
30 Mar. 00
