The story I covered was the release of American Hiker Sarah Shourd from her year long captivity in Iran after allegedly crossing the border into Iran from northern Iraq with two other hikers (who remain detained). Ms. Shourd was finally released this week due to a pre-existing health condition that had grown worse in prison. Between the three news sources, there is a great disparity in the amount of detail and analysis given. Fox news covered the story briefly, not even mentioning Sarah’s medical condition, or that the US presumes them to be innocent, in fact the entire story is four sentences long with the final one being “They have been accused of spying.” The BBC edition covers more details of the release and delves into how this situation came about (“they crossed the poorly-demarcated border by mistake…”). The BBC also stir the readers’ pathos with a description of the prisoners’ current condition, “the three friends were all said to be undernourished and depressed after more than a year in virtual solitary confinement.” Finally, CNN gives the most in-depth report and off a distinctly American anti-Iranian vibe by suggesting that Sarah’s release is just a ploy by Ahmadinejad to gain brownie points with the international community before the upcoming UN meeting.
All three sources of news reported the same basic story with the same facts. The closest to distortion of the truth was Fox news omitting the probability of the hikers’ innocence and Sarah’s medical condition as a strong reason for her release. Overall, I think the BBC report was the best for giving enough information without showing an obvious bias. CNN spelled out too much while Fox did too little. One common link between the stories was that they all had the same picture of Sarah Shourd in a head cloth and glasses, although that may be because there are very few pictures of her.
As I was writing this blog I suddenly realized I really should have used an Iranian news source. So I looked one up.
It was a lot more interesting. They claimed that the three hikers were near a sensitive military zone and bring up the fact that American has several Iranian nationals in custody. Iran Daily accuses the US of treating its prisoners harshly while claiming that “the three Americans have been treated well, despite the fact that they are facing very serious charges.” Wow. I guess the source really does matter.
If you're interested in the fate of the hikers after the media stops covering them, visit http://freethehikers.org/
Great article.
ReplyDeleteSomething you might want to consider is that several journalists from each news station write different things on the same topic. If you want to compare you should find comparable articles with similar dates and formats.
The article that you found for Fox was probably just a summary of the event. Fox has actually covered this story quite extensively.
In this Fox article http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/14/irans-state-tv-says-woman-freed-year-prison/ there is an extensive description of the event. It also clearly mentions "Ahmadinejad has said Shourd was being released on compassionate grounds. Her mother says she has serious medical problems, including a breast lump and precancerous cervical cells."
Thanks for the added info Mike. Sometimes, just the date/time alone make a difference in what gets reported.
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