Hi all, Happy Monday.
This is an article that was published in the New Yorker last winter about a man on death row after he was convicted of setting his house on fire and killing his family. The first part of the article describes the man and the evidence in a way that the reader can feel sure that the man is guilty.. he got into trouble as a child, he had a history of violence, etc. In an interesting twist, the second half of the article pleas at his innocence and at the end- after his excecution- he is found not guilty. I think it is an excellent example of framing and agenda setting, as it was released right around the controversy over the death penalty in Texas last year. It is a great piece of journalism and worth a read.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?currentPage=1
I’m glad you posted this article, Lynn. I looked it up after you talked about it in class awhile ago, and really enjoyed reading it. I found it so fascinating that the story could seem so different from beginning to end just with the way the journalist framed it throughout.
ReplyDeleteFraming is such an interesting concept to me since all of the journalism classes I took taught that journalism should be objective and not have a point of view. These days, almost every news outlet has their own point of view that they use to frame stories around. I think it’s scary because most people have no idea about media framing and just believe whatever they see on or read in the news to be objective and correct.
Great article Lynn! It is amazing to see how effective framing can be when describing a situation. If someone were to just read the first part of this article then he/she would more than likely think that this man of course did the atrocious things he was accused of. There is so much background information that supports this assumption. If the reader were to stop here then a guilty verdict would be expected and probably welcomed. Only if the article is read in its entirety can a reader truly feel the effects of framing. At the beginning they would have been ready to condemn the man for the fire and subsequent death but after completing the article a sense of sadness and wrongness overtakes the reader because of their initial thoughts and final outcome of the situation. It is truly amazing how framing can make audiences feel towards a situation.
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