During a peaceful protest on September 21st in
Charlotte North Carolina, commemorating the death of Keith Lamont Scott earlier
that week, a protestor was shot and critically wounded. The next day in my
professional writing class we were looking at two varying examples of accident/
incident reports on the issue, the first was a report by The New York Times and
the second was an article posted on the blog Photography is Not a Crime. The New
York Times report seemed to be geared toward a more professional audience with
a lower level of understood context/ popular knowledge about the NC shooting
and subsequent protest. The Photography is Not a Crime incident report seemed
to be geared toward an audience with a higher level of understood context and one
that would be more keen to value personal testimony over official statement.
Because of the differing target audiences for each report,
contrasting structural and stylistic strategies were used to relay the
unfolding events/ investigation. The New York Times article was entitled “Man
is Shot in Charlotte as Unrest Stretches to Second Night”—here we see Richard
Fausset and Alan Blinder (co-authors) utilizing passive voice and not
indicating a specific actor of the violence. The audience is made aware that a
man was shot, but the audience does not have access to the identity of that
shooter. Structurally, the NY Times article covers a wide variety of subjects
from the shooting that catalyzed the protest to other national shootings that
could be seen as part of a greater movement. While this strategy gave the
article an appearance of national community it could be argued that the zooming
out of current events was a technique used to distance the authors and the
readers from the reality of this occurrence. The Photography is Not a Crime
article was entitled “Witnesses: North Carolina Protestor Killed by Cop, not
Protestor Contradicting Police Narrative”—here we see Grant Stern utilizing
active voice indicating his belief in a specific identity of the shooter. This
article mainly focuses on the events that occurred during the protest and
utilizes eyewitness tweets/ images taken from social media outlets in the body
of the report. One could see similar stylistic/ grammatic strategies in the
headlines of other media sources covering events surrounding and following the
protest/ investigation, for example:
MSNBC
Headlines
Sept.
21—“Police using teargas against Charlotte protestors”
Sept.
22—“Will protests boost voter turnout in NC”
FOX
Headline
Sept.
27—“Angry Charlotte residents call on mayor, police chief to resign in wake of
shooting”
Each news outlet appears to
have a personal agenda making it all the more important that our generation
develops skills to become effective and critical consumers of media sources. To
be a critical consumer of information one needs to be able to objectively look
at facts by first recognizing and facilitating persuasive techniques used by
various media outlets, and then compiling that remaining ‘fact skeleton’ into a
general picture of related events. While these articles only help paint a
partial picture of the events which took place in Charlotte it is my opinion
that our society needs to begin approaching one another with patience and honor
instead of fear. We must acknowledge fully the reality of events, like the
shooting at the protest in Charlotte, to begin a process of communal healing
and national growth.
News Article Hyperlinks:
NY Times
Photography is Not a Crime
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