CNN Official Interview: Andrew Shirvell of the blog 'Chris Armstrong Wa...

I read a rather sad article today on BBC World News with the headline "Student kills himself after gay sex footage put online" which struck me as a perfect example of the microcosm/macrocosm type of news article which we were discussing in class. While the circumstances which motivated the student to jump from the George Washington bridge are definitely news worthy, the writer of this article appears to draw the connection between this event and two other key issues going on in the world: gay rights and cyber bullying. This isolated event is therefore made even more significant by the fact that occurred amidst its larger, societal conflicts. Because of these issues in addition to the high level of international media attention surrounding the case of the departed's roommate and his friend (the two responsible for the filming and viral spreading), I can imagine that the judge handling the case will give the two are rather severe sentence (up to 5 years in prison). In addition, I think they should post some sort of profile about the deceased, perhaps to make his case a bit more human like we talked about in class and not "just-another-gay-suicide".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11454786

In tandem with this tragedy has been the Anderson interview of Assistant Michigan AG, Andrew Shirvell, over his six month stalking and cyber-bullying of Chris Armstrong, an open gay student and president of the student body at the University of Michigan. TV journalism, although very different from written publications, it seems is in some ways more transparent. In class, we discussed a journalist’s responsibility to accuracy and to be as transparent as possible -- striving not to omit certain details from a story in order to imply an idea to the reader which suits the journalist's own agenda. In a typical news article, many of the visual details between the Cooper and Shirvell would be omitted. However, by watching the interview, although this is subjective, one generally does get the impression that Shirvell is as strange and inappropriate as his actions toward the student have been - aspects of his character which may have been lost in a typical news articel. Thus, TV has the ability to portray new stories with characters, as we discussed in class, much easier than the written word seems able to. In addition, Cooper’s questions appear very direct and seem to voice the public’s own queries into this situation. The television journalist seems to be much more of a representation of the public, becoming the physical connection between us as the viewers and the subject of his interview -- unlike a typical news story where we rarely get to see the questions which the interviewer asks.