CLASSMATE'S BLOG RESPONSE: Why CNN Might Have Been Right

Sarah Schmidt recently posted her media critique, in which she had a few valid points, but also seemed to be a bit misled in her reasoning. The article is question, she said, is "completely irrelevant to the rest of the world". This, I would argue is not exactly the case with this article.

Sarah, you first mentioned that this took place in London, England. This was no doubt an implied question of "Why would CNN, an American news station, write about an event happening in England?" To refute this, I would like to make it clear that CNN is an international news service, as you can see by viewing the top bar of their website. There's CNN U.S., CNN International, CNN Mexico, and CNN Arabic. So their reporting of this is relevant in that sense. CNN's "about" page even says, quote: "The international edition of CNN.com is constantly updated to bring you the top news stories from around the world. It is produced by dedicated staff in London and Hong Kong, working with colleagues at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and with bureaus worldwide." Besides, you said it was one of CNN's top world stories. Not national stories.

You also pointed out that this story talked about an attempted robbery, and said "there is no way a wide audience was affected by this..." Well, to put this into perspective, yes, it was only "attempted", but they were still held at gunpoint. And Sarah said a wide audience could not be affected by this, but to be honest, if one of George W. Bush's children were held at gunpoint, I feel like a lot of Americans would like to know. You're not expected to want to know this information, because you are not the targeted audience, Sarah. English people, true Brits, are the target audience of this piece. Yes, "no one was hurt and nothing was stolen", but people still care for some inane reason. So it's newsworthy.

You also mentioned that this article was incomplete. This could be of many factors, some of which could be:

• This article was posted almost right after it happened (or at least after information was released about it to the public).
• The information was given to the writer by the government. They are experts at simplifying details to the max in order to stifle any political controversy. Of course it won't be detailed.

Finally, I don't mean to completely through your ideas under a bus, but this story could not be a human interest story. To quote Wikipedia: "In journalism, a human interest story is a ... story that discusses a person ... in an emotional way ... Human interest stories may be 'the story behind the story' about an event, organization, or otherwise faceless historical happening..." This story fits none of those molds.

So... sorry, Sarah, but I feel like CNN was in the right here.