I chose the topic of “US government
shutdown” as my project work, which is a kind of hot event in the recent
political field all over the world. I picked up several media outlets reporting
and commenting the event:
In BBC news, it apparently points out the
reasons why US government shutdown is that The Republican-led House of Representatives insisted on
delaying President Barack Obama's healthcare reform -dubbed Obamacare - as a
condition for passing a bill. Although President Obama has declared that US
budget shutdown is entirely avoidable, the controversy between two main parties
or the excessive expenditure is responsible. BBC seems in the objective
standpoint to cover US government shutdown with quoting President Obama’s speech
and making the video to show what this event mean and what outcome will be
produced. Also, besides reporting the event happening, it somewhere mentions the
Obama’s complaints about his vain efforts to prevent the shutdown while to some
extent contradicts “entirely avoidable”.
In Washington Post, when
searching US government shutdown, mostly are talking about the huge impact and
influence which it brings such as threatening the giant Antarctic marine
sanctuary and Germans will have to wait longer to gaze at Earth from space. In
the news I picked up mainly discussed the impact to democratic that is the
nutrition programs and head starts are limiting due to the shutdown which means
that thousands of poor women and their children will lose the opportunity to
access to pre-school education. The shutdown is not only about more than
700,000 federal employment face the dilemma of unpaid and no guarantee it means
a lot to the whole US running from bottle of the society. Moreover, the news in
Washington pays more emphasis on the global impact on account of US cannot be
supplanted in the world. It conveys the emotion to readers: it actually your
business and it just like your home government shutdown, withdraw your careless
show your worries! The news here is almost about the impact and outcome, few
words to explain how it comes out and what solution needed to solve. The media wants
to convey the feeling of “ dismay” in order to gain more understanding and
sympathies and less laughing.
The most interesting I
found is from Chinese network blog because Chinese are celebrating their
National day and having vacation when US government shutdown. So this big
contrast has been exaggerated by some media agencies especially in network. It
mostly lies in Chinese’s less knowledge of US political system and the
phenomenon of government shutdown will never happen in China. Therefore in the
news of “Why Chinese actually envy the US government shutdown”, it points out
the most Chinese medias are admiring remarks about the shutdown will only
happen in the democratic country. And it gives the China media a good chance to
reveal the weakness of democratic political system.
To conclude, comparing
several different media news, it is understandable that different media report
the same topic out of their own profits and standpoints. US government shutdown
is such a fresh and easily-recognized topic in political field that indeed
being the target and platform for media to propaganda. Maybe BBC as public
broadcasting covers most objective and less-emotional.
CHENXI CHEN
These are really interesting comparisons - especially on terms of the Washington Post article commenting on the media focus on visually striking signifiers instead of the significance in terms of how the most vulnerable are affected. It would be interesting to think about this in terms of the news values appealed to - what assumptions are made here about what is most meaningful to their audience? The observation that the Chinese media are almost equally keen to interpret its significance, though very differently in relation to their own perspective, is also perceptive.
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