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Wednesday, 3 August 2011

An appraisal of the news Week 3

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/08/02/online-censorship-no-s-x-please-were-facebook/

Online censorship: no sex please, we’re Facebook


This online news published on the website named Crikey was mainly stating the cencorship of Facebook. According to the news, for a long time, Facebook has been criticized for its standards of censorship which is puzzling and blurring. The latest blasting fuse was that Facebook removed an image of an artist which depicts a naked infant swimming underwater though it was reposted later.

In terms of the content of this news from the perspective of news writing skill, there are some flaws need to be pointed out.

First, the beginning of the news was not designed to catch the attention of readers.
Theoretically, it is a narrative opening, it may a little bit insipid. What's more, the second paragraph which is aiming at supplying the background did not work and  tend to be redundant.

Second, there were too many sources or interviewees that did not have clear details for their identities.
For instance, in the sixth paragraph's beginning, it comes like this:

Laura Eckert said she suspected photos of her friend giving birth in her bathtub last year may have pushed Facebook over the edge even though, as AllFacebook website reported, no nipples were showing.

In the industry, Laura Eckert may be a famous photographer, but it is unfamilar to most of audience visiting the website and ultimately it is confusing some people who do not get enough photograph background.
The same situation can be found in the fourth paragraph as below:

 Facebook reps told NME magazine: “Facebook does allow photos of naked … babies. Why? Put it this way — if a parent wanted to share some photos of a newborn with their grandparents, we wouldn’t want them to not be able to share them on Facebook.”

It can be seen that lacking of details of interviewees, as well as using the abbreviation are inappropriate.

Third, what is also noticeable is the error of punctuation just like below and it is may attribute to the failures in typesetting or layout.

Of course, we make an occasional mistake,” Facebook spokesman Simon Axten said in an email to MSN.

On the other hand, the heading of this news is excellent and it catches the eyes of audience successfully. It was written in first person and what's more, sensationalism is always popular.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with your opinion that the news article has some problems when it comes to get audience's attention and the angle.

    to me,the leading part of Katie's article failed to get my attention.Nude baby's picture is actually a great start to grab audience's attention. However the author is just talking about general Facebook censorship.It's boring.

    On the other hand,the artic lacks a specific angle.So most of time the author is just trying to put general and different information bulks together and when I read it, I feel lost.

    by Jamie

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  2. it's very lucky that both of us focus on the field of technology. This topic is very interesting. The phenomenon is not only emerged in the facebook, but also in other social networks, such as the microblog in China.You paid closer attention on the detail of the article, that's great. I also agree with your opinions.

    From Qian QI, z3370055

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