LE LOTUS

Both of the death of seven astronauts and the death of seven children are great news for me. They both contain some news values which make them worth reporting. However, if I have to choose only one of them to report, I will choose the death of seven children.
Compared with the seven astronauts, those seven children are definitely “grass-roots”. The impact of astronauts’ death to the country was a lot more significant than the death of seven children. But it is debatable for British newspaper to over-report on the astronaut news but “only a total of 350 words of UK newspaper coverage to the death of seven school children in an avalanche.”
The first reason that I would choose to report the death of school children is I am not American. If I was working that time in my country, there was no doubt that some other journalists would report the astronauts’ death. The public in my country were able to get the information, then that was it. I would not join in the crowds and write an article contain similar information from the same story. That would not be interesting at all.
Furthermore, I believe that the schoolchildren’s story would have emotional closeness to the audience, even for the international audiences. There are some countries do not have astronauts at all. On the contrary, every country has families and children. I mean, even audiences are from different country they would identify with those seven casualties. It is mentioned in Melvin Mencher’s book News Reporting and Writing that “people are interested in events and individuals that seem close to them.” Audience first attracted by the story because it was unusual and the huge impact. However I think the further reporting would not be popular anymore. The cause of the accident, data and impact were all connected with technology or something that were known by minority. It seems so far away from people’s daily life.
In addition, I do not agree that people are keen to report the “huge event”. There may be some counter arguments on the impact issue. Nevertheless there is an alert in Melvin Mencher’s book.
“Never, never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be a false alarm and lead to nothing. But it may, on the other hand, be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.”
————-Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin.Seven children are not some celebrities or elite people. Their impacts are not as huge as those astronauts. But if we dig deeper, they may be someone who achieved in their own study area, or the cause of their death was not only the snow slide, but also the unreasonable operation during the activity or rescue process which would possibly bring more astonishing news for the audiences. Maybe those seven children asked for help but were ignored, or they did not prepare enough because of the school, parents, or organization’s negligence of duty. Moreover, reporting tragedy in daily life brings the awareness of safety, making related people introspective, and attracting attention from parents, schools. Some problems are necessary for society to face and solve. Let alone that some people really lost their life and brought huge pain to their families. As a journalist I think at least we should treat the “life” equally. It is both pitiable and ridiculous to have a hierarchy of death exist.