It is hard to disagree that the media is the most important source of information. Almost all people learn about what is happening in the world via newspapers, various magazines, and TV reports. However, the major drawback is that the media is not always honest and trustworthy; hence, one has to be more critical about what he or she learns from the news. Moreover, various media outlets tend to have bias and tell about some events in rather different ways. The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of staging news in media and track a relatively current news story and find out whether the four major media outlets presented it in the same way.
News Staging
In 2016, CNN Business, a financial information and news website, revealed that ABC News staged a crime-scene shot. This is an egregious example of misrepresentation because ABC News correspondent Linsey Davis and the crew decided that placing a yellow police tape will make the reportage more interesting and eye-catching. They were telling about a thirty-year-old woman who “had been held captive in a storage container allegedly by a registered sex offender” (Byers, 2016). The horrifying story was real, but the staged crime-scene made some people doubt the competence of ABC News.
The Murder of George Floyd Told by Different Media Outlets
A terrible incident took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 26, 2020. George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old black American man, was murdered during being arrested by several policemen (“George Floyd, the man whose death sparked US unrest,” 2020). This horrifying accident was reported by four major media outlets: Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and BBC News. First of all, these four websites told about this flagrant incident in a very touching manner so as not to offend George Floyd’s friends and relatives (Ebrahimji, 2020). Fox News and CNN began their articles with the life-story of the murdered man: he wanted to start a new life in Minneapolis but found his death there (Ebrahimji, 2020). All of these media outlets mentioned that Floyd was “a gentle giant” (Fieldstadt, 2020). At the same time, Fox and BBC News noted that, in 2007, he was arrested for armed robbery; CNN and MSNBC never mentioned this fact and did not accuse him of anything related to crime (Chakraborty, 2020). It is rather surprising that while having biases and different traditional views, these websites represented this story in a rather similar way.
References
Byers, D. (2016). ABC News staged crime-scene shot, photograph shows. CNN Business. Web.
Chakraborty, B. (2020). George Floyd case: Family, friends describe him as ‘gentle giant’ looking for a new life. Fox News. Web.
Ebrahimji, A. (2020). This is how loved ones want us to remember George Floyd. CNN. Web.
Fieldstadt, E. (2020). George Floyd was ‘very loving’ and a ‘gentle giant,’ friends and family say. MSNBC. Web.
George Floyd, the man whose death sparked US unrest. (2020). BBC News. Web.