A major story that is currently being reported by the media is the video of Ray Rice hitting his wife in an elevator. Although what Ray Rice did is reprehensible, there are multiple things wrong with how the press handled this story. Not only did they fail as journalists to get all sides of the story, they also made this specific story “Featured” or “Front Page” while articles about ISIS seemed far more life-threatening and only received a mention. The media has failed to uphold multiple of the journalistic standards and violated some of the yardsticks.
Abuse definitely is an important topic in today’s society. It is estimated that there are 960,000 cases of domestic abuse every year (http://www.statisticbrain.com/domestic-violence-abuse-stats/) . That hardly ever gets in the news, but Ray Rice does. The media is not focusing on the big picture of domestic abuse, instead they are focusing on the Ray Rice event. This is an example of how the media is violating one of the yardsticks, explanation. The Ray Rice instance is only one case out of hundreds of thousands. Why is the media so focused on this case though? It seems like an instance where they are focusing on keeping the interesting important instead of vice versa. The only reason that they are so focused on this case is because it involves a successful professional football player. The media turns those on TV into superstars, even for bad reasons. The media is keeping the interesting important by doing this. Many websites like CNN and Fox had this as their featured story instead of the growing threat of ISIS.
As Journalists, it is not right to silence a person who has involvement in a case, no matter who this person might be. In the case of Ray Rice, although he should not have been punching a woman, no one reported his side of the story. The yardstick that they are violating here is fairness. There were no statements from him. No one seemed to bring up the fact that he is in a player’s union and has certain rights to be heard before he is fired. The NFL seemed to arbitrarily react by suspending him for 2 days. Then, because of media attention, they fired him without hearing his side. The media is not reporting on how the NFL is violating his rights by doing this. They only are getting information from one side and are therefore not reporting fairly. The media is also not following the journalistic principle of inclusion. They seem to be inflating this event to rile up more veiws, delibirately they are not including information about Ray Rice’s circumstances.
The media as a whole has not covered this issue thoroughly. Their sensationalizing tactics do not meet standards of the journalistic principles. Part of this is that they are not being fair and also blowing this one incident way out of proportion. Those reporting on this need to remember that they need to keep the important interesting instead of the interesting important.
Great critique!
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