Though the news ultimately aims to broadcast information to the public, how effectively and interestingly this occurs is entirely dependent upon the media format that is used. The information we are receiving could be exactly the same, but the different cues we pick up from each format, and the way the news manipulates each format to get a point across all effect what we take away from the broadcast.
For example, there were a couple of news reports discussing an event that occurred Sunday, October 17th – the Democratic Republic of Congo had a women’s march against sexual violence. This sounds very straightforward, and for the most part, it is. The first lady led thousands of women around a prominent town in Congo while holding up banners that denounced forced sexual acts upon women. The text-based article that described this event, however, took a very different approach than the video-based news story. The text article made sure to go into detail as to why these women felt the need to march for their rights, informing the reader that even the country’s own government troops were raping and killing women. It even goes so far as to give an estimate as to the number of people who were raped in the past year: 15,000, an obscenely high number. This article relied heavily on logos – logic, statistics, facts – to get their point across. Text-based articles in general tend to rely on logic, as it is easier to convey numbers and hard facts with words than it is to convey pure compassion and emotion.
Meanwhile, the video-based news story relied more on pathos – emotions – and ethos – credibility. The video shows a reporter discussing the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Anthony Gambino, a man who has intimate knowledge of the current atmosphere, considering he has spent much time there and even wrote reports concerning the issue of sexual assault and rape in Congo. The video also goes more into long-term solutions that appeal to the emotional nature in all of us. Though he uses statistics as well, they are much more broad in scope, and there is no source provided for his conjecture. The video also goes more in-depth on the role of the men who are sexually assaulting the women, as opposed to the text article which talks more about the response of the women who realize they need to stand up for themselves. It also discusses this issue in relation to economics in the country, which the news article failed to mention. Overall, the video was able to go more in-depth for many reasons: it is easier to keep the attention of people when they are able to see who is talking, and see that the person knows what they are talking about. News articles are kept brief so they don’t lose the focus of the reader, and therefore tend to only summarize the event that occurred.
However, the two do contain similarities. Both obviously share the same overall opinion about the issue, which is that men need to “stop the sexual terrorism” that occurs in this country. Also, the overall topic is the same, even if the two media formats decided to look at the issue from different angles. Nonetheless, the two media formats appear to share the same political and social issue quite differently from one another.
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