A few days ago, a MS-13 gang member assaulted a Tennessee man with a rifle, bleach, and a plastic bag. This article is titled MS-13 Gang Member Convicted of Brutal Tennessee Assault With Rifle, Bleach, Plastic Bag, Feds Say, and it is found on the Fox News website. From reading the article, there are many of the 7 yardsticks that Fox News failed to meet. Some of these include context, explanation, and local relevance.
The article from Fox News failed to meet the standard of context because there were no reliable sources. Context refers to how many sources a journalist includes in their writing, and a good journalist has multiple. However, this article only had sources in the form of quotes. These quotes came from the Assistant Attorney General (Brian Benczkowski) and Donald Cochran (Attorney of the Middle District of Tennessee). But still, quotes are not reliable sources. A good reliable source could be another website, book, or news source that you obtained the information from. Quotes do not tell us where the information is coming from, and they aren't very reliable because the words could be made up. If another reliable news source used the same quotes, and that was noted in the Fox News article, then this wouldn't be a problem.
The article also failed to meet the yardstick of explanation because the article just basically stated facts. This article is an example of isolated reporting, meaning we only got the "what". Readers want the big picture reporting—the "why". Big picture reporting helps readers to fully understand why things are happening. When the journalist just lists the facts, they are giving the readers the bare minimum of the story. But the readers want more. In the article, it states, " Once at the house, Serrano-Ramierz pointed an assault rifle at the man before strangling him with the rifle strap. He continued the assault by 'spraying bleach into his eyes and then attempted to suffocate him by placing a plastic bag over his head,' prosecutors said. The 31-year-old then clamped the man's finger with a pair of pliers while holding the rifle on him, telling the man if he told anyone about the assault that he would kill him and his mother." This is the only time the reader gets any detail about the victim. The journalist never tells the readers why Serrano-Ramierz is out to hurt this man. The readers don't even know why this man is at Ramierz's house. The journalist isn't telling the readers the "why". So, to fix this problem, the journalist who wrote this article could of added more details on the man being targeted and why these things happened.
A final yardstick that was not fulfilled by the journalist is local relevance. To residents living in Louisville, Kentucky, this story feels semi-local because Louisville is only a few short hours away from Tennessee. However, this story did not appear on a local news station. This article was on Fox News, a national news station. Now, this story happens to be very sad, but why would someone across the United States in California need to know something about a gang in Tennessee? This makes no sense. The local news need to cover all of the local news stories, and the national news needs to focus on all of the national news stories. The only way that the journalist could fix the mistake in this article is to delete the whole thing and fix it, but that seems a little over the top. In the future, however, the journalist could write about the national news stories to avoid making the same mistake.
In conclusion, this article found on Fox News failed to meet the yardsticks of context, explanation, and local relevance.
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