Reading Seven

Midterm week is coming up, but first let's get the last chapter of Block 1 out of the way: Lucky Chapter 13.

First we'll talk about Crime, accident, and fire stories. All of these are similar in that the who, what, where, and all that stuff is important, but there are many other factors that make a SPOT NEWS STORY (it was in bold in the textbook) different from other news. The one major thing is that if you can make it to the site as news is happening (or right after in terms of the crime) then the opportunity for interviews is very large. You got police/fire officials, eyewitnesses who are standing around with nothing better than to talk to you, and of course the people involved or affected by the situation. One thing about these stories that is a little different than normal reports is that you should probably be a little more sympathetic. The normal story about what happened is important to the readers, but so is what happened to the subjects, if they're ok, and how they will move on. The hurricane example in the book was a good example of this.

Also mentioned in the chapter is court cases, in which there's about 2 billion times you can write a report for the same trial. Some important topics that were covered included libel (unlawful reputation damage using written statements) and qualified privilege (reporters' use of police reports to avoid libel charges). They also touched on the free press/fair trial contrversey that leads to many arguements on the media's right to cover a trial vs. the court's right to an impartial trial. The book sums up this court coverage with a section on ethics, reminding the reporter that some details, topics, and accusations may be off-limits for sensitve stories. When confronted with an issue on what to print in a court case, it's usually a matter of judgment.

Get it? Court? Judgement?

No? ...fine. Maybe I'll be better after Fall Break.