Media Critique: CNN News: "A 3-day-old and 2 other infants were stabbed at a New York day care center, police say"

Media Critique: CNN News

"A 3-day-old and 2 other infants were stabbed at a New York day care center, police say"

     An article was posted Friday, September 21, 2018 by Ray Sanchez on CNN about a crime committed in a house daycare for infants. To clarify, this story explains how an older, female employee stabbed three infants and two adults in a home daycare. She then proceeded to go to the basement and makes an attempt to end her life via slicing her wrist with a knife. All parties involved were rushed to the hospital and are in critical condition. While intriguing and interesting, this story does not meet the criteria to be considered newsworthy journalism. Newsworthiness is a very important factor that determines the difference between good and bad journalism. Because of multiple factors, this story does not make the cut. 

       While this story may be relevant to the friends and family of the victims in New York, it is definitely not relevant to an audience in Louisville, Kentucky. What effect does this story have on anyone not closely related to the victims or instigator of this crime? There is no logical reason for people around the country to be reading this story, for it does not cause any difference to the life of anyone not closely affected, and is only a crazy and heartbreaking story to read. Unless there was a nation-wide trend of daycare crimes and stabbings, this story lacks the value to be known by all of America. 

     Although this story is devastating and disturbing to imagine, there are many other ways it could have been written to match the criteria good journalism. One way would have been to not post it on a national platform, for it lacks the relevance. The most effective way to make this article successful journalism, while also keeping it on CNN, would be to change the story's purpose from telling people of the incident, to informing them about ways to further screen employees and how important that part of the hiring process is. To rephrase, instead of the core purpose of this article being about what happened in New York, aiming it on how to prevent this from happening everywhere around the country. Employees committing crimes and injuring people in their workspace is far more common than this exact situation. 

     There are plentiful articles and stories posted online with no newsworthy elements, but if the purpose of these articles were changed from telling a tragic story to teaching others how to avoid this situation themselves, there would be much more good journalism on the internet. Not only this, but with a little more information on how to avoid these catastrophes, citizens around the country would be safer from the situations we often read about in the news. Some incidents, though, cannot be avoided. These are the incidents that need to only be posted in local newspapers, not broadcasted nationally. While this change may never happen, it would definitely make crime-related journalism better and more useful to others, while helping to keep citizens safe.