News Story Analysis

Assignment 1 ‘News Story Analysis’

Course title: English for the Media

Course code: ENGL318

Student name: Hui Man Wai

Student number: 12013514D

Submission date: 15th February, 2015

In the headline of “TransAsia plane lifted from river; 31 confirmed dead”, the SCMP editor directly indicates the groups of facts such as ‘What’ (TransAsia plane), ‘Who’ (31 passengers) and ‘How’ (lifted from river) involved in the accident of TransAsia plane crash. The rather detailed reason of hitting the water by TransAsia and the situation of other passengers are also mentioned in the sub-headline. With such well-focused and defined headlines, it successfully invokes human interest and appeals to emotional responses such as sympathy and sadness by the word of ‘dead’.

In this news story, the most important information is given in the first paragraph which is known as the “lead”. For example, TransAsia Airways flight clipped a bridge and crashed into a river dictate ‘What ’while rescuers and 31 people dictate ‘Who’. The writer also clearly mentioned Taipei dictates ‘Where’ and it happened yesterday morning (means on 3rd February, 2015) that dictates ‘When’. Rescuers continued to search for missing people dictates ‘How’.

As mentioned, the writer summarized the story’s most important information in the “lead”. The latest information of TransAsia plane crash such as the numbers of survivors is the most newsworthy so it goes first while the secondary important information like the details of rescue work and background of 53 passengers come afterwards. The result is a news-judgement process that ends with a story constructed according to the inverted pyramid structure. With this style of writing, the writer purposely ends with the least important information in the final paragraph to have an echo by exposing the current situation of the taxi driver and the passenger.

When it comes to the writing style, active voice mainly dominates the whole context of the story and even so does the headline since it is more powerful and more direct than passive voice. For example, the headline with active voice of “31 confirmed dead” is much straighter to the point than those with passive voice like “31 passengers were confirmed dead”. Additionally, the writer also provided concrete and specific information like “high-rise buildings” and “elevated” to indicate the height of the buildings thus the descriptions are explained precisely. Adverbs are also being used like “apparently” to emphasize how hard the pilot tried to avoid hitting high-rise buildings.