The news story I decided to write was covered by
CNN, and it had to do with contaminated vaccines coming out of a building that
is built right by a garbage dump. The story makes good use of “bad news bias.”
The reason why this is getting so much publicity is because of the shock factor
it has. This is a problem that could potentially affect many people. 11 are
dead, 119 are sick, and 13,000 people may have gotten a bad vaccination. This
is obviously a major problem. When the government is putting out vaccinations
to help people and it ends up killing them, it is never a good day. This makes
for a good story. People thrive off of drama and this being a big story of
something bad going on, it is going to attract a lot of attention. News stories
like this can also cause a panic; because it is going to make people who may
have received a vaccination recently fear they might get something wrong with
them. When people are worried about something they tell others, in this case
this news story. Stories like this cause a domino effect of people talking
about it and telling others about it.
It
starts off with a reporter going to the scene of the incident. He goes there
just trying to get some information and figure out why this happened. He
travels to Massachusetts to the building this all went down to talk to a
representative. After he asks why this all happened, the man replies by telling
him he has to leave. This creates more drama and fire to the story. It leaves
you asking, why didn’t they respond? What did they have to say? What do they
know that I don’t? Another bias present in this story is the “temporal bias.”
This is all recent stuff and they are trying to find out what happened because
nobody knows what has happened yet. This creates a sense of urgency in the
story. It makes it all seem more real because of it happening so recent and
shows the reporter actually traveling to the scene. This particular story will
most likely have updates that will be on the news in weeks to come. Overall,
the way they covered this story was very intense and dramatic and makes the
world out to be a scary, dangerous place, which is pretty much is. (405 words)
From just reading the headline I could see that the story was going to be a “bad news bias.” The harm that it could do to so many people is crazy and I agree with you that it has a shock factor. With bad news people tend to pay more attention and like you said they thrive off of the drama that it creates. Also, since the story can cause panic to people who have gotten a vaccination recently, I agree with you that it causes the domino effect of people telling others about it. Since they news story is recent it is a “temporal bias.” With no one really knowing what is going on it will cause the news to keep changing depending on the information they receive. I agree with you that the story will have updates for weeks to come. Also, I think that for the weeks to come it will be one of the main news stories.
ReplyDeleteThe other bias that I found while watching the video was “visual bias.” With the news company traveling out to the building with the contaminated vaccines made the story seems more real. Also, when they showed the news reporter covering the story behind the building at the garbage site; it showed viewers what could be the cause of the contaminated vaccines. It also, gave them shock of finding out that a garbage site is right behind where vaccines are being stored. Another visual the story gave was when the news reporter was in front of the NECC building and was asked to leave. If they just told their viewers they were asked to leave the property it would not have caused as big of an effect as if they actually showed it. When it showed the reporter leave it gave people reason to believe that the company was hiding something and they did not want anyone to know.
-Megan Grimes (319)