Charlotte Lakin
Writ 1122
Professor Leake
03/03/2013
Sandy Hook Shooting: From Local to International
News
can be local, national, or international but how does this affect the way the
story is reported. If something happened in a small town in Indiana you would
expect the local news to report it but would a national newspaper or even an
international one. If that event in the small town was incredibly tragic it is
more likely that the story will reach national and international news sources.
We would expect the different news stories to report the same facts but in a
different manner but how different are the stories portrayed. For example, a
conservative newspaper will report political information very differently to an
international newspaper that is neither conservative nor liberal. How do
stories change as they go from country to country? How did the story of the
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting change as it went from local to national
to international news?
On
December 14th, 2012, Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown,
Connecticut unfortunately became another victim of school shootings. Adam
Lanza, before shooting himself, killed 20 children, 7 teachers, and his mother.
He shot his way through the school’s security system and proceeded to two classrooms
shooting anyone who tried to stop him. Children either hid in closets or locked
classrooms or were escorted out of the school by teachers or law enforcement
officers. He used his mother’s rifle to shoot the victims and her handgun to
shoot himself. Lanza was unfortunately very accurate with his shooting as all
but two of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene; the other two victims
were taken to the hospital where they were pronounced dead. This shooting was reported
as the second deadliest school shooting after the shooting at Virginia Tech,
which had 32 victims. Within the next three days newspapers all over the world
had published stories about this tragic event.
The
full story had only just started to surface within the three days but the local
newspaper, The Newtown Bee, was
already reporting an early report of the incident online on the day of the
shooting. The writers of this story are from Newtown and thus would have been
more greatly affected than other reporters. These deeper feelings are displayed
in the article, Details and Names Slow to Emerge in Wake of School Shooting,
by the use of words and phrases such as “disbelief”, “shattered with grief”,
“tragic”, “grave injuries”, and “horrified”. The preliminary article is short
because not many facts had been given but it shows the multitude of the law
enforcement involvement and quoted the state police lieutenant reassuring that
“many agencies are working together to keep you informed”(The Newtown Bee).
Because The Newtown Bee is a local
newspaper they added at the end of their article that a lot of the churches
were opening for counselling services and that a specific church was holding a
mass that night.
Though The New York Times probably won’t talk about the churches being open for counselling services the author will still add a lot of emotion to the article because this happened in their own country. Of course the article, Nation Reels After Gunman Massacres 20 Children at School in Connecticut by James Barron, will have the plain and boring facts but it will also include similar emotions to The Newtown Bee article. This article was published the same day as the shooting but goes more in depth about what happened than the local story. The New York Times article gives more detail about how Lanza got into the school and what guns he used. Also, Barron gives some insight into Lanza by quoting a law enforcement officer: “Mr. Lanza had grown up in Newtown, and he was remembered by high school classmates as smart, introverted and nervous. They said he had gone out of his way not to attract attention when he was younger”(Barron). Barron has a similar word choice to the local article to make the situation that much more real and tragic: “terrified parents”, “sobbing children”, “frightened faces of children”, and “grim faces of women”. Barron also chooses his words wisely to describe Lanza. He chooses phrases such as “brutal efficiency”, “chillingly accurate”, “evil visited this community today”, and “slaughtered the children” in order to make Lanza seem more inhumane and evil.
When we cross the Atlantic Ocean to England, the story becomes a lot less emotional and a lot more factual. The Telegraph, an English newspaper, published a story, written by Nick Allen, hours after the incident. This article is much more fact based and does not use incredibly descriptive words to give the readers a certain emotional reaction. When describing what Lanza did, Allen just presented the facts but also added, unlike The New York Times, that his brother claimed that Lanza had a personality disorder. Allen quotes ABC News for some of the facts presented but also quotes some of the witnesses and President Obama for a personal look at the incident. The New York Times uses Obama and other law enforcement officials for some facts and personal reactions, where as The Telegraph uses a parent, a student, and an unnamed witness. Even though Allen does not necessarily use as much emotion in his written words, he adds a lot of pictures to the article. The pictures depict the tragic event accurately and add to the emotions of the article. However, when reading the article, even whilst looking at the pictures, you do not get the same emotional reaction as when reading The New York Times article. Nick Allen recognizes that it is a tragic event but being so geographically far away from the event the story is slightly more removed from the emotional side of the story.
Even more removed from the situation is a story reported by the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA). They published a very short story stating what happened with few details. The described the event in a few sentences. They gave details about his past such as when he moved to Newtown, when his parents got divorced, and that “[he] reportedly enjoyed soccer, skateboarding, and video games, and had no known criminal record”(KUNA). They reported that it was the second deadliest school shooting and gave examples of the deadliest school shooting and another school shooting in Colorado. This story has little to no emotion associated with it and just states the facts of what happened.
Instead of
writing a story about the facts that happened that day, Gulf News, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, published an
article filled with comments from world leaders offering their condolences to
the victims and their families. The article contains quotes from leaders from
Canada, Australia, The Philippines, The European Union, and many more countries.
The article contains a few sentences describing the event so that the readers
know what happened including an introduction describing that “World
leaders express [their] shock and horror after a gunman massacred 20 small
children and six teachers Friday in the US state of Connecticut, in one of the
worst school shootings in history”(Gulf News). The Gulf News takes a completely different approach than any other
newspaper. Their article portrays a lot of emotion from different leaders from
all over the world. This article portrays as much if not more emotion than the
articles from the U.S. but does not include many facts. The readers perceive
the emotions associated with the event through the eyes of others rather than
creating their own emotions from reading an article about the facts of the
event. This approach to the event allows readers to look at how the rest of the
world is affected by the event and see how world leaders responded to it: UN
chief Ban Ki-Moon wrote to the Connecticut governor giving his “‘deepest
condolences at the shocking murders’. ‘The targeting of children is heinous and
unthinkable,’ he added in condemning the "horrendous" crime”(Gulf
News).
As the stories are reported further and further away from the U.S. they become less emotional and more fact-based. The U.K. is very connected to the U.S. so The Telegraph thoroughly reported the event with lots of detail but not as much emotion in the written word but more emotion in their choice of pictures. The New York Times was just as emotional as the local newspaper but added more details. The story reported in Kuwait was completely devoid of emotions and only presented some of the facts. However, the story from the United Arab Emirates was different to all of them because it only had a few of the details from the event but had a tremendous amount of emotion. In my opinion The New York Times’ article was the most effective because it had a lot of details but also had a lot of emotion. With an event like this, the news needs to get the facts out there but it is also important to convey the tragedy involved with the event.
Works Cited
Allen, Nick. "Connecticut School Shooting: Massacre at Sandy Hook
Leaves 20 Children Dead."
The Telegraph. Telegraph Media
Group, 14 Dec. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9746051/Connecticut-school-shooting-massacre-at-Sandy-Hook-leaves-20-children-dead.html>.
Barron, James T. "Nation Reels After Gunman Massacres 20 Children
at School in Connecticut."
The New York Times. The New York Times
Company, 14 Dec. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2013. <www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html?pagewanted=all>.
"Details And Names Slow To Emerge In Wake Of School
Shootings." Newtownbee.com. The
Newtown Bee, 14 Dec. 2012. Web. 5 Mar. 2013.
<newtownbee.com/news/news/0001/11/30/details-and-names-slow-emerge-wake-school-shooting/4584>.
"Gunman in US School Massacre Wore Battle Fatigues, Military
Vest." Kuwait News Agency.
Integrated Digital Systems, 15 Dec. 2012. Web.
5 Mar. 2013. <http://0-www.lexisnexis.com.bianca.penlib.du.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T16834499900&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T16834496549&cisb=22_T16834499944&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&selRCNodeID=48&nodeStateId=101en_US,1&docsInCategory=2&csi=356951&docNo=1>.
"World Leaders Express Shock over
Latest US Shooting." Gulf News.
Al Nisr Publishing, 15
Dec. 2012. Web. 11
Mar. 2013.
<http://gulfnews.com/news/world/usa/world-leaders-express-shock-over-latest-us-shooting-1.1118954>.
No comments:
Post a Comment