Comparisons between two news articles about the Mong Kok midnight conflict
Violence broke out overnight in Mong Kok on the 9th of February due to the clearing of unlicensed food stalls set up on a busy junction for Lunar New Year celebrations. This incident attracted great attention from many people, including the Hong Kong government. The news was spread around quickly by various news agencies. In this writing, I would like to compare two news articles about this event issued by two different new agencies — South China Morning Post and BBC.
When looking at the titles of the news from South China Post, it gives a negative feeling towards the incident because it specifies the violence used in the incident — “shots fired and bricks thrown”. Its content is very emotional too. It describes it as “a riot” for a few times in the article and it also reports that the protesters were “rampaging”. Such wordings induce a sense of fear among the readers who didn’t witness the incident or weren’t involved.
Also, the article from South China Morning Post seems to be supporting the police officers. It said that “the police force promised a full investigation to determine whether the officer had been justified in opening fire”, which appears that it is defending the police. Regarding the citations, they all come from the governors who were very dissatisfied about this “riot” and critised the protesters. This news article creates a very negative atmosphere by blaming the protesters.
On the other hand, we can tell that BBC News seems to be reporting the fact. Its heading is way more neutral than that of South China Morning Post — it uses the word “clashes” to describe the Mong Kok incident. Comparing with South China Morning Post, the use of wordings in the article is less exaggerated and aggressive. For example, it interprets the protesters as “angry” and the whole incident as an “unrest”.
BBC News appears to give the whole picture of the Mong Kok protest. It doesn’t only provide the viewpoint of Chief Executive, CY Leung, towards this event, which he said “Hong Kong can never tolerate that and the police will spare no effort to arrest the rioters”, but it also offers the opinions of the protesters and the underlying problem that leads to such protest — the activists that were involved want to defend what they believe is an integral part of local culture and tradition, which identify Hong Kong, and to fight for greater autonomy for Hong Kong. The news article from BBC is less biased and it gives a more comprehensive report, which allow the readers to better understand the protest.
In conclusion, it seems that South China Morning Post has put its own opinion into the article, which influence how the readers think about the event, whereas BBC News is more factual. Personally, I prefer the article from BBC because its report is closer to the truth of the protest.
Reference:
South China Morning Post http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1910845/shots-fired-and-bricks-thrown-hong-kong-tense-after-mong