Marie Colvin was in Baghdad writing about the crisis in Iraq in January 1991. She wrote a lot of controversial things in the article "Baghdad under Fire" due to the fact that the general atmosphere was such that any criticism of British or American forces was not seen to be acceptable and there was some censorship of the news by the ministry of defence.

Fergal Keane's article was written much later in and it was broadcast on Radio 4 as part of the foreign correspondent programme. During the time that Fergal Keane was in Hong Kong he was covering the take over of Hong Kong to China. The BBC were expecting the usual cov

"Outside the window now, below us on the harbour, the ferries are ploughing back and forth to Kowloon, millions are already up and moving about, and the sun is slanting through the tower blocks and out onto the flat silver waters of the South China Sea"

In each article there are a few main protagonists that reinforce the story and make it believable because the characters back it up. In letter to Daniel the main character could be Daniel because the whole letter is written for him. But the article is about Britain and China and there struggle to make the take over as smooth as possible. In Marie Colvin's article the protagonists are Hussein and other representatives and other BBC reporters. Hussein, is the character which makes Marie Colvin's piece very private. This is because Marie Colvin writes so much about him, the way he lives, his views and she enters in on his private life. Despite all this Hussein still accepts her as a friend and tells her that she can stay whenever she wants. He develops a very personal relationship with her and the way that Marie writes about him makes him seem like a very warm character.

Fergal Keane is much more poetic in his descriptions and he is not as precise as Marie Colvin is. This is because he does not commentate on every detail although what he is describing is not relevant to the take over but it helps the reader experience what he is seeing.

"Everybody was jumpy, We lost our way leaving the airport and when we drove up to the checkpoint there was an audible click as the soldier flipped the safety catch off his AK-47 and walked up to the car with the barrel pointed through the window."

After the place has been established and the reader is familiarised with were the events are taking place the second most important thing is what are the facts of the situation? As a generalisation one would think that in terms of content then there is a lot more irrelevant (personal, unnecessary) material than there is factual. Marie Colvin's article can be compared

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Approximate Word count = 1356
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)