I found something very interesting, with a little inspiration from the TED video.
For instance I never really thought i would ask myself, " hmm, I wonder how Syria is doing?" Due to many obvious reasons but then I thought to myself, how does such a sensational story like,"Syria death toll likely approaching 70,000, says U.N. rights chief" make it into American media?
So this story involves the 2-year conflict between the people of Syria and the president, Bashar al-Assad. Due to the escalation of protests and demonstrations, that resulted in the massacre of innocent civilians. Syria was drawn into the inevitable civil war. Many groups on each faction claimed the other to have committed atrocities of war. Thus bringing forth the idea to commit both factions to the International Criminal Court. Mainly to try and send a message that there will be consequences for the both of the parties involved.
Now I started to put together in my own perspective why this might be "news worthy". Human interest in this story alone can explain how people are attracted to the hard pains and reality of war that the civilians must face in their everyday lives; not just fighting armies. Everyone (even if if their not Syrian) can relate to this story because the "evil doers" in their immense greed of power (either faction, depends on how you look at it) are willing to stomp through the civilians and the common people (us) to get what they desire. Also the consequence of this story involves a very large number of casualties of war. Even if your president Bashar al-Assad, the loss of life is very powerful in a sense that death reaches all of our imaginations; not to mention the massive scale of casualties. Even if you can not relate to both consequence and human interest to make this a valid news story; surely prominence comes into play by introducing the very infamous man, president Bashar al-Assad. Specifically the region in which Syria is located happens to be a very "hot topic" in the world media in terms of economics, politics and of course war/violence. To be quite frank many world possibilities can in turn, happen if either side wins the conflict. With unimaginable consequences affecting our country or even our state.
What currently is taking place in Syria is news worthy because even though its thousands of miles away, this story draws in attention with the possibility to affect our country as a whole; eventually reaching each and every one of us.
"Yahoo story"
Hey Max, I think you make a good point that the media's task is to add a level of relevance to these stories which occur half-way across the world. I think despite the lack of geographic proximity in this story, the media attempts to articulate its implications for the U.S. Whether it be the way trade will be effected, or the loss of human life, I think the media emphasizes a level of proximity to these foreign events.
ReplyDeleteI am inspired that you were inspired, Max. You do a great job describing your own perspective here -- sometimes we need to know things to know what we don't know about things ... I think that's a paraphrase of a quote from someone much smarter than me :-) !
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