So I am reading this news article on Yahoo news this morning and as I am reading through it I am astonished at how the article is written. Sure the grammar is fine and the reading flows – but it is the content I am bothered with (and probably a reason why I don’t read very much “international news” these days. The article is supposed to be about two female sailors who were shot on their ship by a colleague (with a third victim in the hospital). The shooting has been cleared of being associated with any act of terrorism. Ok – so we know that this was an “inside” attack – by one of their own. Yet the article dedicates 127 words to the actual news of the deaths and 322 to the history of terroism in the region. I know that perhaps stress due to the environment may or may not have contributed to the deaths, but seeing as it has been ruled out as a terroist act, I find the refocusing on the terroism to be a sad way to divert the attention from the actual crime.
/Sigh
Published by Kelly Boudreau
Associate Professor of Interactive Media Theory & Design at Harrisburg University. I research Digital Games, Play, Sociality, Avatars, Toxicity, and Social Norms & Boundary Keeping. Thoughts and ramblings on this site are my own as I grapple with all the things professional and personal and everything in between. View more posts
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I’m never sure whether this media tendency to link isolated issues to current global preoccupations or (dare I say?) trends is to try to show relevancy of why the issue was mentioned in their reports in the first place? Or can it, in some/many situations, be a form of agenda-setting? Given how little media today is truly independant, and how much is in hands of but a few corporations, I suspect it is a bit of both.
I wonder what message people would walk away with from this story you’ve linked? Is it that this was or wasn’t connected to terrorism?
I think it is a diversion tactic. Simply. In a way, saying “one of our soldiers did something terrible” BUT , here are other terrible things that are happening to our soldiers… but I am a skeptic in that way.