Earlier today, a small boiler room explosion shattered a number of windows at a hotel in Davos, the site of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. While no one was hurt, this event drew attention from virtually every major media source I checked as part of my daily perusal of the news. First of all, I found it interesting that an event that elicited not "so much as a jostle or a wince" according to one eyewitness. Considering the importance of corporate sponsorship (especially advertising) in news broadcasting, the only explanation I can conjure for such intent coverage on such an insignificant event would be that the news corporations want to increase their demonstrated level of concern for corporations so as to gain the approval of the high powered executives at the Davos conference. Secondly, I found decidedly different accounts of the story as I switched between news sources. For example, both the New York Times reported that the police recieved a message from an "Italian activist" website claiming responsibility for the explosion, but had yet to verify the integrity of the source. The Washington post neglected to report any claim of responsibility, insisting that "police said it was caused by fireworks."
Fox News differed dramatically from the Times and the Post in reporting its story. In the subheading of the article as it appeared on the website, Fox alleged that "Left-wing activists claimed responsibility for a minor explosion on Thursday at a hotel in Davos, close to where top executives and world leaders were meeting, but nobody was hurt." This claim, which appeared as the first sentence in the article, not only verifies the source that the Times said Swiss police had not yet validated, but it also introduces political dichotomization into the issue with the use of the phrase "left-wing." As we discussed in class today, this rhetoric is so deeply ingrained into American media consumers that the readers of this article instinctively identify the perpetrators of this explosion with a Democratic agenda. Of course, Fox news is known as having a fairly strong conservative bias, just as the Post and the Times are known for having more liberal biases (although not nearly as pronounced as Fox's conservative slant). The use of this language in Fox's material helps to forward its own political agenda set forth by the ownership, whereas the liberally leaning Post and Times have no incentive to use such language because of the ownership's traditionally liberal bias.
Fox news also had a short video segment they ran with the story on their website. In the segment, a business reporter in Davos elaborates on the event, and gives a report of an eye-witness account. While an eyewitness account seems like a perfectly reliable source in a story like this, I found it interesting that the reporter asserted the source's American nationality quite adamantly (she states this Americanness three times in a video that runs for less than two minutes). I found it curious that the source might be viewed as more reliable simply because of its American affiliation (after all, every person at the forum is high level or CEO level and probably a reliable source of such information). The Davos explosion blatantly advertises the variously skewed reporting supplied by the Times, the Post, and Fox news.
Fox Article: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/01/27/minor-explosion-davos-hotel-injuries-reported/ (video is a link)
NYTimes: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/small-blast-at-davos-hotel-shatters-glass-and-calm/?scp=12&sq=davos&st=cse
Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/davos-diary/2011/01/me_and_the_bomb.html
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