British MP and Iraq-War Protester Barred Entry to Canada

I will take full advantage of the blog format to display my emotions on this story, but only in this introduction. Jason Kenney, you suck.

Now please put that and other predispositions aside (as any ethical journalist should try to do when reporting the news). British Member of Parliament George Halloway, known for his controversial protests against the Iraq invasion, was denied entry to the country today for his speaking tour. I know through my own experiences with border-crossing that my predispositions with guards and the immigration process might affect my reporting and discourse for this story. I therefore have to place myself in the opposite position on the spectrum and get both sides of the story as fairly as possible.

In this entry I'll be discussing two articles on the story by the Toronto Star and the National Post - two Canadian newspapers with different perspectives - in order to find out what messages they want to convey through their reporting. Hopefully these comparisons will shed light on their reporting as a whole.


1.How is news presented differently on these different platforms?

The Toronto Star Headline reads: Canada Blocks Outspoken British MP
The National Post Headline reads: British MP Denied Entry to Canada Threatens to Sue Government

In taking a closer look at the headlines, I noticed that while the Star posits Canada as the factor in blocking Halloway's entry, the Post uses Halloway as the main subject/noun in the headline. While each headline is an action, taking the subject and verb from each headline may clarify what i'm getting at; "Canada Blocks" vs. "British MP...Threatens" . In the introductory statement alone, one can begin to see the point of view behind each story.

The opening sentence of the Star article reads, "Canadian officials have denied outspoken anti-war British MP George Galloway entry into Canada on grounds he poses a threat to national security."

The opening sentence of the Post article reads, "An outspoken British MP who's opposed to the war in Afghanistan says he intends to take legal action against the federal government over its decision to refuse him entry to Canada."

These two introductory sentences establish the same message as the headline with mostly the same information, yet constructed in proper sentence form. However, sometimes the more important sentence in an article is its closing; it finalizes the story and embodies what the reader will feel after finishing the article.

The final sentence of the Star article reads, " 'We applaud the Canadian government for keeping George Galloway, a man who thrives on his support of terrorists, out of Canada,' said CJC Co-President Sylvain Abitbol. "

The final sentence of the Post article reads, "New Democrat immigration critic Olivia Chow, meanwhile, called the move "pure censorship." 'That's not a good road to go on,' she said Friday."

It's interesting to note that the two final sentences are opposite of what one would expect given the assumptions we've made from the headline and introductory sentence. I'm not sure if this is done deliberately, but perhaps it is designed to leave the reader with a sense of disapproval in the conclusion, therefore leading the reader to remember the other messages from the article (headline/intro/content) and agree with those views over the final "disagreement". This may be a bit of a stretch, but it's something to notice. I'll try to remember this for future stories.



2. Where and how can you identify some of the following: citizen journalism; public sphere; issues of globalization; humanist photojournalism; war image; filters; discourse; interesting or problematic race/gender representation?

Citizen journalism isn't truly relevant to the article outside of Halloway's denied entry and reporting the truth about this conflict, which citizen journalism is usually involved in (truth and conflict). Filters, i'm not certain if they come in to play or not; discourse, however, is the fundamental factor in comparing these two stories. The tone of these articles varies in position, but not so much in structure. Word choice is my favourite way of conducting my pseudo-discourse analysis, and is an excellent strategy when thinking critically about news and how it's presented. The difference in headlines, for example, says a lot more than the average reader is aware.



3.What did you learn from reading / listening to news from a venue you don’t usually go to? What do YOU have to say about news?

Unfortunately I haven't ventured too far from reading news online; for my next entries I hope to try some different platforms of news, like radio, television news or television shows. I feel like another important factor in online reporting these days is the "Comment" box, where readers can respond and express their opinions if approved by a moderator (who functions mainly to prevent spam and nonsensical posts). More and more readers are taking advantage of the opportunity to "talk back" to news stories, unlike television and radio which, aside from featuring debates, rarely act as two-way media. They are the senders of the message, and we are the receivers. The messages they receive from us comes in ratings, phone-ins, letters. But with online interaction after the articles, more and more websites are able to understand their audience.