Media Critique
An article was posted on CNN’s website on September tenth 2016 titled “Florida father arrested after toddler son dies in hot truck.” This article is not a newsworthy article for a couple of reasons, mainly it does not follow the ten Elements of Journalism or the seven yardsticks.
The first Yardstick of Journalism is newsworthiness. The definition of newsworthiness is will it affect a large ammount for people for a long period of time. The answer for this article is no. A kid dying in Florida and his father getting arrested are not relevant to someone in Seattle Washington. It only affects the people involved. This story should only be on local news, or maybe not even that.
This failure to meet the newsworthiness yardstick could have been avoided by simply not posting the article. It is not a story to be posted on national news, so therefore to not have posted the article they would have not violated the Seven Yardsticks of Journalism. Another fix would have been to give a “so what?” at the end of the article. Give a tie into something else that would have increased the affectance that the article had on people. If the purpose of the story was to make people more aware, it would have a higher newsworthiness. The article did not include such, so the media critique.
To summarize, an article posted on CNN’s website was not newsworthy of being on national news. They could have added an explanation at the end of the article to make their article more relevant to national audiences.
First, remember that in your media critiques you're supposed to post a link to the original article that you're criticizing. Fortunately I was able to find the article, thanks to Google: http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/10/us/florida-toddler-hot-car-death/
ReplyDeleteSecond, I might have agreed with you that the article wasn't newsworthy, except for these paragraphs at the end:
"An average of 37 children die each year from heatstroke after being left in vehicles, according to research by San Jose State University. Already this year, 29 children -- including the boy who died Friday -- have died under those circumstances, the university said.
Since 1998, Florida has seen the nation's second-highest number of children's deaths in hot vehicles -- 72 -- after only Texas, with 100 recorded cases.
Children can overheat four times faster than adults, according to the National Safety Council. Even in 70-degree Fahrenheit (21-degree Celsius) weather, a vehicle can reach life-threatening temperature in minutes.
Experts recommend parents place their bag or cell phone in the backseat as a reminder that their child is in the car."
Those paragraphs provide the necessary context and connection with a broad national audience. Yes, the article uses a specific example in the beginning, but the problem of parents leaving their kids in their cars is a nationwide problem, and the end of the article does a good job connecting that personal story to a newsworthy issue.