The arkansas gazette did a story on three boys who killed themselves one after the other, and had to present the story in a way that would be sensitive to the community's mourning, but also give straight facts. They decided to make the story the front page news story, as it was a big deal, and put another sensitively written article about the community's lost beside it. Many news stations and other news papers got involved as the story became national. There were suicide help notes being run on TV, they even went through imitative suicide guidelines on how to write their story.
In my personal opinion I think they did the best of their ability in a very tricky situation. I believe that they did justice to the story. The purpose of a news story is to give facts and inform people about what had happened, it shouldn't dwell on emotions or glamorize the story, it should be a straight story on the events that had occurred. They did do this, but they also put a sensitively written article reaching out to the community, which I thought was a good way to handle the sensitive nature of the story.
I don't think I would have done much differently from what the arkansas gazette did, however I would not have put it on the front page considering it's nature. However I understand that was inevitable due to the national attention it was receiving from other news sources. It was a big story that had to be told, but had to take in the account of public community's response, and grieving. Despite the odd I think the gazette did all they could and presented a well done piece of work.
No comments:
Post a Comment