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| From Newseum.org. See here for bigger picture |
The Anniston Star. Anniston, Alabama. Friday, September 2, 2005.
"Death in the streets: As anarchy erupts in New Orleans, plans begin to open McClellan for refugees"
"Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: Lootings, car-jackings and other violence"
Some language that really stood out to me in these headlines were the use of the words "anarchy", "refugees" and "looting". All of those words are very strong. Anarchy is associated with chaos due to lack of government help and that is interesting to me because the newspaper is putting out that the government is absent. As for lootings, there are other words that could be used in place of looting. The idea of looting vs searching for food is controversial. It is so hard to tell whether someone is actually looting and by using that word in a newspaper article, it makes the situation seem that much bigger. The use of the word refugees is also very controversial. Many people think that the people who left New Orleans are evacuees, but they are being called the very heavy word, refugees.
In my opinion, the article is biased, but I think that it's biased to show how bad the situation is. This article was written right around the time of the storm, near the storm, so they used words like 'anarchy' and 'refugees' because those are the loaded words that catch people's attention. They are able to show the severity of the storm with the words they chose to use for the headlines. If they would have chosen to use lighter words or just by saying that the storm was bad, it would not have made people realize the severity. I think this article could have something to do with race, but it is not super obvious. The main photo on the page is of a group of African American people and the caption under it calls them refugees and has looting in the article.
The purpose of this article is to show people who are not in the storm, just how bad it is. They want to show people the aftermath of the storm and how it is affecting the people. If someone had no prior knowledge of the hurricane or the aftermath, and they read this article, they would be very scared. The big thing is death and looting, with a picture of a man who had collapsed. It doesn't say anything about relief efforts of what good has been done already. This is what makes the article newsworthy. Stories about relief and government could seem very boring so those stories don't make the news. The writers and publishers for the newspaper want to put in something that will be interesting to outsiders, like death, so they can sell more of their product.
In some situations, I believe there could be a relationship between race and news coverage. From looking at multiple headlines, I saw that they tended to use looting and refugees for the African American people in the storm and they used searching for food and evacuees for the white people. Even if there is a relationship that i noticed in the articles, there is no way to tell whether it was on purpose or not. I think the biggest reasoning behind it is what newspapers put for their front pages and how the specific writer felt the story should be written. It is unfair to say that all of the newspapers considered race in their writing about Hurricane Katrina and used different language because of race.
In my opinion, the article is biased, but I think that it's biased to show how bad the situation is. This article was written right around the time of the storm, near the storm, so they used words like 'anarchy' and 'refugees' because those are the loaded words that catch people's attention. They are able to show the severity of the storm with the words they chose to use for the headlines. If they would have chosen to use lighter words or just by saying that the storm was bad, it would not have made people realize the severity. I think this article could have something to do with race, but it is not super obvious. The main photo on the page is of a group of African American people and the caption under it calls them refugees and has looting in the article.
The purpose of this article is to show people who are not in the storm, just how bad it is. They want to show people the aftermath of the storm and how it is affecting the people. If someone had no prior knowledge of the hurricane or the aftermath, and they read this article, they would be very scared. The big thing is death and looting, with a picture of a man who had collapsed. It doesn't say anything about relief efforts of what good has been done already. This is what makes the article newsworthy. Stories about relief and government could seem very boring so those stories don't make the news. The writers and publishers for the newspaper want to put in something that will be interesting to outsiders, like death, so they can sell more of their product.
In some situations, I believe there could be a relationship between race and news coverage. From looking at multiple headlines, I saw that they tended to use looting and refugees for the African American people in the storm and they used searching for food and evacuees for the white people. Even if there is a relationship that i noticed in the articles, there is no way to tell whether it was on purpose or not. I think the biggest reasoning behind it is what newspapers put for their front pages and how the specific writer felt the story should be written. It is unfair to say that all of the newspapers considered race in their writing about Hurricane Katrina and used different language because of race.
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