Critical Question 3: different titling on the Mong Kok Riot news

First piece: Forbes Business — Hong Kong Protesters Clash With Police In ‘Fishball Revolution’

Second piece: Bloomberg Business — — Hong Kong Celebration Peaceful in Wake of Bloody Riots

The two sources are not contradicting but they’re heading to different directions in reporting the same news. In general, the first piece has more of a neutral view while the second is slightly more negative in nature.

For the first piece, the reporter used the word “clash”, which simply means disagreement with no adjective describing the degree of it. I think the word itself is very neutral. It has a weak potency as there’re lots of stronger words (e.g. conflict, dispute, grapple) to replace it. It is, although, quite active as it requires the two parties to put an effort to disagree with one another.

Contrasting to the second piece, it is called a “revolution” instead of a “riot”. Revolution can be good or bad depending on what the participants are fighting for. It is a strong and an extremely active word, which is the same for the word “riot”. However, it is a very negative word as it is often associated with violence. “Revolution” stresses on striking for something important and the purpose behind but “riot” is a form of violence expressing distress irrationally.

In my opinion, the reason why Forbes packaged their news in a more neutral manner is because it wants to leave the room for the readers to judge the facts in the incident by themselves. To remain professional as a news-reporting agent, it is trying to be more objective when it comes to entitling its report.

For Bloomberg, it even contrasted the “bloody” riot with the “peaceful” lunar new year. The reason the create such a large contrast is to sound more dramatic and grasp the readers’ attention. The reporter would probably like to condemn the participants as well therefore he portray the incident as a “bloody” one. It is a very strong word as people associate it with life-and-death situations. It is an active word too as blood is a result of intense physical struggle.