Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting Case Study

On February 14, at Stoneman Douglas High School was involved in a massive shooting where 17 students and staff were killed. Therefore, this has taken all the medias around the country to speak about the shooting (Miami Herald, CNN, Sun Sentinel, New York Times, Fox News, BBC, etc.). The trending topic has been whether to enforce stronger gun policies. Although, not all news was focusing on the incident alone as priority but they had other intentions to expose. Those in particular used different elements in the rhetorical triangle to display secondary issues to enforce them in the covering of the case. Florida Parkland shooting has impacted the United States, although the national news seems to use ethos, pathos and logos for different reasons as to the local news.

Fox news interviewed Colton Haab (parkland shooting survivor) a week after the shooting, where he confesses that he decided not to attend the CNN town hall as they told him to stick to the script and rewrite his personal questions. Haab decided that he should let this known to the nation as some of the other peers that did decide to attend the town hall might have their questions also manipulated.

In the article “CNN Is One-Sided in Gun Control Coverage and Doesn’t Seem to Care” By Alex Griswold, show how CNN is trying to gain the audience in favor of banning the gun control in different areas. Inside the article we can see how one of their tweet shows a picture with a link of 71 Florida lawmakers that refused to vote for an assault weapons ban. While also showing different tweets supporting and keeping Parkland survivor David Hogg in the social media.

When asked who is keeping the secrecy, is CNN that is planning to support the ban of gun policies trying to rewrite the questions that should be asked to be forecasted in their channel. Therefore, are they really supporting gun policies or are they focus on something beyond the shooting, trying to be the main news source to be the ones inside the whole rebellion and therefore gain the largest audience. While in this way, they went from displaying ethos as the national news to having a lack of ethos as their displays don’t show credibility.