Fergal Keane and Marie Colvin balance the communication
Both of the articles that are being studied are very different to any usual piece of reportage in the way that what the BBC or the Times was expecting from these two journalists was very different from what they received. Marie Colvin and Fergal Keane were reporting on very serious topics in interesting times yet both of their pieces were so different from the stereotype newscaster articles. This is because they were a lot more personal and contained a lot of information that was not necessary but made the article a lot more pleasant to read and brought the events described in it a lot closer to the reader. 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
Although "Letter to Daniel" is about the take over of Hong Kong which was a very important event, the article contains very little or no factual details about it. But this does not matter because the article is so personal that the whole event of the take over is shrouded with the beauty of the writing. "Amid the clutter of piled-up carpets, silver necklaces, antique frames, heavy Kurdish belts - and beside the ubiquitous picture of Saddam Hussein, a likeness of President John F. Kennedy beaten into a copper plate - we discussed whether he should stay in Baghdad or take his family to a place safe from American bombs, as other merchants had." "...The churchyard of the parish of Narabuywei, where in a ransacked classroom I found a mother and her three young children beaten to death. The children had died holding onto their mother: that instinct that we all learn from birth and, in one way or another, cling to, until we die." er of weekly events in the area that Fergal Keane was covering yet what they received was a very personal insight into Fergal Keane's views and opinions on the take over conveyed in the form of a letter to his five day old son. 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. 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
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Approximate Word count = 1356
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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