Looking at three different news source's

After observing and following Al Jazeera, Guardian, and ABCNews(the one I picked) I have made comparisons between the three and have found many differences. First off, when looking at the home page before clicking any links, I saw instantly differences in the way news stories were presented on the homepage. For example, when looking at Al Jazeera in comparison with the other two, the homepage contained only what I would call "real news stories" meaning there was no entertainment news stories like there were on the Guardian and ABCNews homepage.


I was able to find an article on all three sites that discussed the NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) air strike in Kunduz Afghanistan. This headline article was about NATO jets bombing two fuel tankers believed to have been hijacked by the Taliban, causing an explosion injuring and killing many Afghanistan civilians in the area. After reading the three similar articles I was able to see that all three news sources had different points of view when talking about the story.



ABCNews gives lots of details about the bombing and also states how civilian casualties have lately been reduced in Afganistan. The article puts "blame" so to speak on NATO German troops, saying they called in the attack fearing the hijacked tankers would be used in suicide attacks at it's nearby military base. This was the only place of the three articles I reviewd that mentioned Germany. ABCNews talked much more about the actual incident then in the Guardian. This is the link for the ABCNews story http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=8497657&page=1

The Guardians article did not really talk about the actual incident that happened in Kunduz. The article stated how this air strike(added to other incidents involving civilian deaths that have happened) would lead President Obama to "suffer the same fate as President Bush." The remainder of the article talked about troop deployment that would increase in the U.S. and NATO's involvement in the war. Link for Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/04/afghanistan-taliban-nato-air-strike

These two articles had two very different agendas they each wanted to cover in their article. I thought it was interesting how the Guardian's front page article about this story gave so few details about the event.

I found the article on Al Jazeera to be the most interesting in my opinion about this NATO bombing story. I was able to get a sense of the emotion that those in Afghanistan felt when reading the article written from their point of view, which is something your not going to get from any other news source besides the one where the event has taken place. This article made the Afganistan civilians seem more human, not just oh some more civilians were killed over in Afganistan. They seam more human to me in his article because for example the article said that it was a sad place there, and how bodies were taken to the mosque and people were praying. Later in the article it is stated how those who were injured in the attack had all lost family. Having heard this from their prospective it made me see how they are not inhuman as we are given the feeling here in America. I think being so far away and hearing only our coverage on global stories like this one make us feel detached from the situation to where we don't think that these people are the same as us, when in reality they have family, friends and lives just like us. Al Jazera article link http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/09/200994465561117.html