A Newspaper Assignment on The Natural Disaster Caused by The Tornado in Louisiana

Part One – Newspaper Names

In regards to the domestic and international newspaper, I was able to find articles related to the recent tornado in Louisiana. For the domestic newspaper, the article was titled, “Louisiana Hammered by Tornadoes” (McGILL, 2017). For the international newspaper their article was titled, “Severe damage after tornadoes batter Louisiana” (BBC News, 2017). I used the U.S News for the domestic newspaper and BBC for the international newspaper. The purpose of this article is to inform to the public, whether it be in the U.S or globally, about the natural disaster that affected Louisiana. Tornados and storms were prevalent among the state which resulted in many people losing their homes, injuries, power outages, and other types of damage. These articles were written to spread the news of this event amongst other things happening in the world today.

Part Two – Compare and Contrast

Starting with the domestic newspaper, I found that the article itself was longer than the BBC’s post. The U.S. News article provided a mix of stories from those were affected by the tornado and stated some facts / general news about what happened. Statements and descriptive language helped described some of the imagery that occurred during the disaster. The article started out with a picture of a woman holding her face and did not include pictures throughout the article, instead it had a 28-photo gallery that had unrelated pictures such as the inauguration, shots of the oval office, a Trump wax figure, and other pictures that did not correlate with the issue at hand. Moving on to the international newspaper, I felt that BBC had a shorter article. Instead of multiple sentences, it only had one or two sentences quoting some of those affected and general information such as the numbers, statistics, and details of each tornado. Although this article was shorter it did include more pictures of the event and a video that showed the rubble of homes that were affected. The description of the event was similar to one another, but in terms of how it was provided I’d say the BBC one had an easier read than the U.S. News article. The U.S. News article provided more detail but did not have many pictures related to it while the BBC one did. Both articles give factual evidence of what happened as well as personal stories/quotes from those affected. I feel that BBC provided more images than the U.S News since it panders not just in one area, but to those throughout the world. So, having actual images of the damages itself can let readers know how it looks like since it may not have been covered in their local news. Overall, I find myself preferring BBC’s article due to its simplicity and pictures. Having those two qualities in an age where fast information is important as well as the pictures to go along with it, create an easily accessible article that anyone can understand and get to.

Part Three – Theory Implementation

While looking through the theory list I found that it was hard to pick two that applied to this analysis. I do feel that the medium theory as well as the social responsibility theory would be the best two theories since I can apply them towards my findings. With the medium theory, I found it to be crucial to my newspaper analysis since the medium, which is a newspaper article, happens to be one that is used everywhere globally. Newspaper articles can differ across the realm and for some, the way a newspaper article looks/is written can be just enough to make someone believe what it says or not. Since, “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, 1964) newspapers provide different viewpoints that can cater to certain people (i.e – democrats and republicans) which in turn leads them to perceive other news outlets to be either less or more trustworthy. The social responsibility theory ties in with the newspaper analysis since it is used to “set up a high level of accuracy, truth, and information.” Without this theory, news articles may have fake facts or low levels of accuracy which does not help represent the news in a proper way. This theory places a high level of importance on the news and its outlets which is important in today’s society where fake news sites pop up causing some to believe it without checking.