Assignment 4

Links: BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11562054
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39709888/ns/us_news-life/
Oregonlive.com: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2010/10/mountain_goat_likely_fatally_injured_olympic_national_park_hiker.html


1)a BBC is owned by the UK state, and funded through a license fee on all television owners put in place by the government to fund the BBC.
b General electric has holdings in MSNBCs 24hour cable and internet which is co-owned by NBC and Microsoft, and the MS stands for Microsoft in the name. NBC has the majority stake in the company, which Microsoft stated to have 18%.
c OregonLive.com is an affiliate of Advance Internet, Inc., a subsidiary of Advance Publications which owns and operates newspapers throughout the country. Advance Publications, Inc., is a privately held communications company Advance Publications' subsidiaries also have extensive interests in cable television

2)a Olympic National Park Rangers, Witnesses, Park Spokeswoman, US Coast Guard, "Officials" which are not specified.
b Park Rangers, Park Service, Peninsula Daily News.
c Park Service, "Officials" which are not specified, Rangers.

3)a Gore, goring; a sense of negativity, use of negative words, eg. aggressive, gore, pelted, etc; takes the side of the visitors, victims, and while briefly talking about past actions towards the rams, they do not further discuss the possible motivations for such actions by the animal; discuss the specs of the rams in the park; use of ram, goat and mountain goat to describe the animal.
b Says this is the first incident in the park involving a ram; less focus on the negative, however some use of similar language to the BBC piece, eg. gore, aggression; gives full names of the victim and the wife and friend; uses goat and mountain goat to refer to the animal; instead of witnesses, states the Peninsula Daily News as the source of information regarding the actual incident.
c Gives a very basic description of the facts in the story, in 4 paragraphs; Uses generalizations like Officials, and Rangers to refer to authority

4) The BBC is the longest article on the story, which talks about prior incidents with rams in the park, and states the name of the park spokeswoman, yet does not give the names of the wife or the friend who were with the deceased. The MSNBC article outsourced to the Associated press, and appears to have a little more detailed information. The names of the wife and friend are present, and they list another news stations report for the actual attack. The Oregonlive article, while also contracting the Associated Press, has the shortest article, only four paragraphs. Therefore, it is also the most concise, and uses many generalizations for the people who were interviewed. It states only the basic facts pertaining to the case. While looking at all three of the articles in turn, they do have similar sentences and information. For one, they all say the deceased man's age and where he died. The headlines all call him a hiker, with the BBC putting 'kills hiker' in quotes, the MSNBC states the mountain goat is suspected in his death, and the Oregonlive article uses fatally injured. It seems that all the publications are resound in not acknowledging this incident as a killing, or murder, through their use of language, and instead imply that it was an accident. The MSNBC and the Oregonlive articles, perhaps because they were both from the AP, talk about the killed mountain goat being examined by a veterinary pathologist, as if to suggest that they will look into what made this animal randomly attack a human, while the BBC makes no mention of this. Speaking as to why the MSNBC article uses the names of the wife and friend, seems to try to put a human face on the incident, and invoke a sense of compassion. Also, through the use of language throughout the article gives it a sense of brutality that almost blows out of proportion. Saying the goat "howered" over the hiker seems to suggest intent by the goat to watch him suffer, which may or may not be the case, yet seems to play on the fears of animal attacks of people. The Oregonlive article uses very similar language to the MSNBC article, and remains srictly factual with who, what, where, when, how. Being a relatively small news network, in relation to MSNBC and the BBC, it is still a good article, and perhaps they were unable to request a longer article similar to what MSNBC recieved, or perhaps they just recieved a trimmed down version of what MSNBC got due to funding. This seems likely since many of the sentences and words used are identical.