News Analysis

Toddler Killed In Crewe House Fire

This article has been extracted from BBC London website. It is the second big article after the headline. The story of a toddler who was rescued at the sight of the fire but who did passed away at the scene while the mother of the baby was able to rescue her two other children before the fire brigade arrived. The children and the mother were rushed to the hospital. At the end of the article, the article quotes “urged people to check smoke alarms in their homes were working properly to avoid further "tragic incidents". This is a very tragic accident for the family, but putting this news up with a major headline, does draw a lot of attention to the news. The news is only relevant to the people living around in that neighborhood, or even that society, but putting it with National news, makes it inappropriate.

The Norris 5:

a.)    Informative vs. Superficial: 

      This article is defiantly informative, because it gives us details about the timing, the place of occurrence, the name of the people involved, the effects and the quotations of sympathies of the neighbors.

b.)    Accurate and Truthful vs. False and Deceptive: 

      The news was short and brief even though it highlighted the major points of where, when and about the people involved. It did not get into depth of how long, and what might have caused the fire, since investigation is still going on, but we can most likely assume that the fire was an accident but there can be other factors which we are not aware of. The news is very local, so it still lacks the immediate investigation. It does include quotations of the neighbors but it does not have information about the parents.

c.)    Objective vs. Biased

I am not sure, but I have a feeling that is biased because of the lack of information. It is biased because firstly there is no statement made by the actual people who witnessed the fire and secondly, it stated that police is investigating, and the fire fighters are trying to figure out the source of fire and some fighters got injured during the rescue mission. This news is objective in way because the target audiences are families with toddlers at home. Nothing was mentioned about the house, or any need for urgency in investigation. They stated “investigation is on the way”. Nothing was mentioned about the location of the house, or any suspicious people in the neighborhood or house defects which could have led to the fire.

d.)    Pluralistic vs. Insular Viewpoint

Defiantly insular because the story is being led by the comments and viewpoints of the firefighters and the chief of the police department. We have no information about the incident from the point of view of any witness or the family suffering.

e.)    Balanced vs. Weighted Side

I would say neither, because this is not an argumentative article. It is plain news based on incident with minimal information. There are no accusations made against any parties, for example, there would have been a weighted side, if the parents of the toddlers would have blamed house security for poor service, or house owners for faulty designs but there are no statements made by the family so there is nothing to argue about. The main concern at the moment is to check properly working fire alarms.