I chose to read about the recent bombing in Norway. It was a very tragic act of terrorism in which almost 100 innocent lives were taken. A right-wing Christian, Anders Breivik, bombed a government building in Oslo on Friday in an attempt to punish Norwegians for allowing Muslim immigration. He had very clearly stated his radical political views on Internet blogs and facebook. After reading articles from the three required websites, I thought I had learned everything I needed to know about incident. The reason was because the same information was in all three of those articles. The same point of view was being repeated, so I assumed that this must be the “right” information. I only found a different point of view on the subject when I read articles from CNN and salon.com (an online magazine).

The first few articles I read were from the very popular news websites: NY Times, BBC, USA today, etc, and those stories were similar in terms of slant. The length differences seemed to only be details (or lack thereof) about police responding times or other unimportant pieces of information that shift the articles’ focuses away from the actual reasons behind the attack. I think a lot of what’s written in these news articles is fluff. There are many phrases used like “it seems to be” and “according to so-and-so…”. It almost seems like these stories contain the same information that is just being re-circulated over and over. At a certain point, we don’t know who actually came up with these facts or even opinions; all we know is that every news headline is exactly the same.

The articles from the New York times, BBC, and USA today all stated that Breivik was just a madman, and there was no direct evidence that his actions on Friday were motivated by politics. However, in the CNN article, Breivik said that the bombing and shooting were, in fact, necessary to prevent the colonization of Muslims in Norway. This piece of information completely changes the story. The other articles seemed to almost be defending Breivik by saying that he’s just a man who is out of his mind. According to CNN, he’s out of his mind and his outrageous actions were definitely based on his personal political beliefs.

My favorite article that I read was from salon.com, a liberal online magazine. Instead of scraping the surface of the issue, this one dug a bit deeper. Many quotes from Breivik himself, or the politicians he follows, proved his intentions. Thinking about the aesthetic dimension, this article was presented in a more honest way. The straightforward facts made more sense to me than the vague comments I mentioned previously.

As much as I preferred to read the independent, left-wing article over the others, it was very specific and didn’t cover as much of the whole story. I think it’s important for people to get broad coverage from popular news companies because they all tend to recycle the same information. Independent news sites don’t; new points of view are introduced, and a fuller understanding of a story can be obtained.

References:

Hanson, Ralph E. "Chapter 6." Mass Communication: Living in a Media World. Washington, D.C.: CQ, 2008. Print.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14259989

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html?ref=europe

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/07/judge-orders-closed-hearing-for-suspect-in-norway-killings/1

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/25/norway.terror.attacks/index.html?hpt=wo_c1

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/07/25/norway_righties/index.html