CNN & The Death of Kobe Bryant

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/27/us/victims-helicopter-crash-kobe-bryant/index.html

Reading all of the articles, watching the news and scrolling through social media yesterday and this morning has been rough. As most of the country and even the world knows, Kobe Bryant and eight others were killed in a helicopter accident yesterday, Sunday January 26th, 2020. What makes it even more difficult for me and many people who do not personally any of the victims, is imagining the immense suffering, pain and sadness felt by their families because not only did adults lose their lives, but multiple children who did not get the chance to live fully. As a mother of a fifteen and soon-to-be thirteen year-old, I was brought to tears. The article above is the most recent one posted just this morning by Christina Maxouris and Artemis Moshtaghian for CNN.

The purpose of today’s blog is for me to analyze the article according to the FAIR structure: Facts, Access, Impacts and Respect.

Facts: The communication is indeed factual, the victims identified have been confirmed by their family members. Some information is purposely left out of the article because all of the facts are not available at this time, such as why the helicopter went down. There were multiple articles/news videos posted yesterday before all of the facts were available and it was extremely strenuous for the public and I am sure for the victim’s families even more so. Some articles posted that there were five victims on the plane (even though there nine), that all four of Kobe Bryant’s daughters were on the helicopter (just the eldest daughter was present, Gianna, 13), and even stated other celebrities were aboard which was false. So it was expected to finally read a factually piece of content in regards to such a terrible tragedy.

Access: Motives are clear within this article and the source of the information has been identified. I am sure that there will multiple follow-up articles to this one as more information becomes available.

Impacts: Reading anything of this caliber of information and tragedy will always be difficult for most people. I believe the authors of this article wrote thoughtfully and also made sure to recognize the other victims who were not as well know as Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna. All in all, this article was very touching and carefully written as not to offend anyone.

Respect: As noted under the “Impacts” section, the authors made sure to separate each of the victims according to how much confirmed information they had available. They did not only focus on the celebrity (Kobe Bryant). This shows respect for all of the other families who are also grieving and affected by this tragedy.

Headline of the article: “Young athletes, a baseball coach and mothers. What we know about the others on board the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant”. This headline is a good attention statement because readers will know exactly what information this article is pertaining to.

The article concludes with a sense of closure as far as knowing exactly who all of the victims were, but I do not believe a full closure is available until there is more information available after the crash is completely investigated. The article left off with a quote from Kobe Bryant to Lebron James on Twitter congratulating him for passing his record for third-highest scorer in NBA history. I think that was tasteful, positive and relevant to the topic.

The main points are presented in sections per victim/family. There are quoted confirmations from family members of each victim to support the information.