Comparing news...

It was quite hard to accomplish my task this week because I spent a lot of time reading online newspapers and searching for a common piece of news each newspaper dealt with. Finally, I chose to analyse the articles concerning with Barack Obama’s victory in the primaries in Mississippi. All the articles are dated March, the12th, the day after the Primary Tuesday in Mississippi.

The online newspapers are written in three different languages:

• English news coming from The New York Times;
• Spanish news coming form El País;
• Italian news coming from La Repubblica.

In my opinion, it is important to focus, first of all, on the titles of the three articles. While the title of the article in The New York Times “Obama wins in Mississippi” is a mere evidence of the facts of the previous day, the title of the Spanish article “Obama vence en Misisipi y aumenta su ventaja sobre Clinton” gives evidence to the fact but it also points to Obama’s regaining his footing over Sen. Hillary Clinton. The Italian article is characterized by a title “Obama vince anche in Mississippi” and a subtitle “La sfida si sposta in Pennsylvania” which points directly to the next battleground for the two candidates, the primaries in Pennsylvania on April, 22^nd.

All the three articles begin with the results of the election giving the exact data and the percentage of the voters and delegates gained by the two candidates. The articles in The New York Times and in El País point out the fact that Obama’s victory was quite expected in a state where the 36% of the population is black and where the largest proportion of the population is made of Afro-Americans. As a matter of fact, Obama’s victory was built on a wave of support among blacks and pools said that the 90% of black voters supported Barack Obama. Nevertheless, beyond giving these kinds of information, the two online newspapers don’t go deeply into the race issue underlying the Primaries election in Mississipi. The race issue is dealt with in detail in the article from La Repubblica where a more thorough view on the composition of Mississippi's population and its problems is given. In addition, only the article from La Repubblica dedicates a paragraph to the comment made by Geraldine Ferraro, one of Clinton supporters and organizer of her electoral campaign, in which she implies that Mr Obama has only been successful because of its ethnicity. In the paragraph, there is the quotation of her words and also Clinton’s reaction defining Ms Ferraro’s comment as “regretful”. Neither The New York Times nor El País mention Geraldine Ferraro’s comment on Barack Obama’s victory in their articles. On the other hand, this issue is mentioned by March, the 12^th article concerning Barack Obama’s victory in BBC News where the exact words of Ms Ferraro are quoted.

At a certain point, all the three articles start talking about the final stage of the Democratic nomination fight: the Pennsylvania primary on April the 22^nd where Hillary Clinton seems to be the favourite. While The New York Times and La Repubblica emphasize the importance of this next step because there are 158 delegates at stake, the Spanish newspaper devotes a whole paragraph introduced by a subtitle to the next primary day in Pennsylvania. Looking for other Italian newspapers dated March, the 12th, I found out that Il Corriere della Sera offers three articles concerning with the primaries in America and an entire paragraph is devoted to the primaries in Pennsylvania as well. However, all the newspapers agree that what is important now is to look ahead to the next battleground because there is still a great number of delegates to gain and because the victory in the next states is essential to secure the democratic nomination.

In conclusion, the message and the amount of information given by the three articles are more or less the same and all give a detailed description of the events. Obviously, there are also some differences but I don’t think they refer mainly to the kind of information that is given but to the order and way in which information is conveyed. The way in which information is conveyed is highly indicative of the aim of the author who is the only entitled with the selection of information deciding which information is relevant and which one can be forgotten.