Current Event Comparison Norfolk Naval Ship shooting America McCrone HUMA 1100 11:00-11:50 Professor: Emily Dibble

For my current event comparison, I chose the resent shooting that occurred aboard a U.S. Navy ship in Norfolk, Virginia. I chose three news sources to compare how each delivered the story, how they phrased the events, and how they chose to put the pieces together. The three news sources I chose were; Fox News as the conservative view, CNN as the liberal view, and Global News, a Canadian news source, as the international view. Much of the basic information was the same in all the accounts, there were only a few differences. Before I begin comparing I would like to go over some of the facts that I picked up from all three articles. In this incident, two men died aboard the USS Mahan at around 11:20 p.m. on March 24th, 2014. The ship is currently docked at Naval Base Norfolk Virginia, and the base was briefly put on lockdown after the incident. All three sources said that the names of the deceased were not released right away. At first, when I read through the articles, they all sounded exactly the same. They had the same facts for the most part, and made the same quotes. Then I read the headlines of the stories, and they all could be interpreted pretty differently. In the Fox News article, the headline read Suspect in sailors shooting death disarmed officer to obtain weapon, Navy says. The headline was little confusing at first and I had to read it a few times to really get the meaning behind it. It starts off by saying that there is a suspect in a shooting, and that this suspect shot and killed a sailor. They dont mention that the shooter was also killed. With the current debates about gun laws, this caught my eye. One of the main arguments that is being made by pro-gun right individuals is that guns are used to protect us, and anti-gun right supporters say that the only people that should have weapons are military member. This could explain why right in the middle of the headline, Fox decided to insert the words disarmed and to obtain a weapon.

Saying that a civilian without a weapon could very easily get one anywhere, even from the military, on a military installation. In the headlines for CNN it read Sailor, civilian killed in shooting at Virginia naval station. Here the eye seems to get drawn to the word shooting. The word is perfectly in the middle, and the words before and after it are dependent on that one word to make any kind of sense. This headline does mention that two people died in the incident, but it almost sounds like the shooting was something that happened to both people, and not that one shot the other. This falls right in line with the belief of some that CNN has a liberal agenda to get people to believe that it is guns that are dangerous not people. On Global News, the Canadian news source I looked up, the headline reads Sailor, civilian suspect killed at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. In this headline, it is described that the sailor and the civilian were killed, and that the civilian was a suspect, and in part responsible for the incident. It does not use the word shooting in the title, and therefor doesnt give an immediate imagery of how they died. This makes sense to me because the gun law debate that is going on in the United States, doesnt affect Canada like it affects the U.S. The account that Fox News in their article, starts off by saying that a civilian shot a sailor, and in their first paragraph they reiterate that the weapon belonged to Navy personnel. The word disarmed is used in the first and the second paragraphs, referring to the suspect disarming the sailor who was on watch. From there it goes on to say that the civilian suspect had access to the base, but that it was unclear whether he had permission to board the ship. The article reports that operations had returned to normal at the base Tuesday morning, telling us that the situation had been settled. Fox also reminds us of a similar incident in September at the Washington Navy Yard, where at ex-Navy reservist opened fire against twelve civilians. The

article then closes out by reminding us of the service that these sailors have provided in the Mediterranean Sea in support of the preventative efforts against Syria. In CNNs news report, the article starts out by saying that A civiliantook a gun from a Navy guard and used it to fatally shoot a sailor. It goes on to say that security personnel then shot and killed this civilian. This right away makes me think that guns are the main character in this story, and that both the civilian and the sailor were victims of these weapons. They then use a direct quote from Captain Robert Clark, the base commanding officer, as he said that the civilian had worked at the installation at a previous time. The rest of it make him sound like Capt. Clark is not very well informed of the situation, or that he is incompetent. They use the words he said or Clark said quite a bit, which to me sounds like they are distancing themselves from these statements, as if they may not be true. CNN ends their article by saying that the bases security procedures will be reviewed by officials, and that this review is due to the shooting. The Canadian news provider Global News reports that A sailor was fatally shot. Then security forces killed a male civilian suspect, making a clear distinction between the victim and assailant. The victim was shot, and as a consequence security personnel followed protocol and shot the attacker. This news provider did not seem to have as many details about the incident as the other two, and said that a lot more things were unknown, like the exact identity of the two men. This news report also mentions the Washington Navy Yard shooting in September, then adds that anti-terrorism training has already been held in the past, including an active shooter drill at this same facility. The conclusion of this article is a mirror image of the one from Fox News, where it mentions the commissioning year of the ship, and their recent deployment in support of preventative efforts against Syria.

With just this one example, I can see how the general public can be swayed so easily by the media they chose to ingest and digest. Though the foreign news provider seemed more neutral they had a little less information. So it would seem that we have to choose between getting propaganda-type reporting or not getting all the information. This is kind of disappointing because to my understanding news providers need to only report facts, and though I understand their writing would be a lot more boring, honesty and truth are worth it. Our section on propaganda certainly kept creeping into my mind as I compared these three accounts of the same event. When we talked about it in the classroom it seemed like it would be fairly easy to tell if someone was trying to put either positive or negative propaganda into an issue, but I wouldnt have spotted it in this particular story if I wasnt looking. The facts are there indeed, but the way that they each word the story starting with the headline certainly tells of an opinion from the writer, from the publisher, and certainly from a group in the population who will be reading this. I noticed that all three articles used some background and historical information as filler, but the CNN article did not mention the naval vessels recent mission to the Mediterranean. They instead decided to end their article with uncertainty about the future, and doubt about the security of the base. This to me speaks of the way that the military is seen by the liberal media, and the opinion that they have with anything war related. This to me says that they want their readers to feel that the military is in no position to protect, and that makes it irrelevant. It also reminds me of Rudyard Kiplings poem in our text book It begins In his poem Kipling talks about how in times of war the soldiers are heroes, and when its over theyre homeless. A long time ago I decided that I would take the word of the media as a grain of salt, and keeping in mind that I would make my own opinion regardless of what they said. I dont usually

watch the news channels, but whenever I do, I ask myself what the other side might be, and how a rival network might report the same story. I also wonder what the reporters biases are, and why the network would or would not pick up the story. Was it because it was too big to ignore, or is it something that they want to push on to others. I know that I have my own bias about this story in particular because I am in the Navy myself, and I respect and understand other service members. When I saw this story, my first impression was to wonder who the sailor was, I have had many friends die in the past few years and this hit close to home for me. This assignment has given even more validation to my ideas, and I hope that I will keep my objectivity and become less bias myself.

Citations: Our textbook- It Begins with our Questions Propaganda Pages (666, 768-772) Is War Moral and Just? Pages (644-645) Internethttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/naval-station-norfolk-us-sailor-shotdead http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/25/2-dead-in-shooting-at-us-naval-station-innorfolk-officials-say/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/25/justice/virginia-navy-shooting/