Compare The Ways In Which Ferg

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Both of the articles that are being studied are very different to any usual piece of reportage in the way that what the BBC or the Times was expecting from these two journalists was very different from what they received. Marie Colvin and Fergal Keane were reporting on very serious topics in interesting times yet both of their pieces were so different from the stereotype newscaster articles. This is because they were a lot more personal and contained a lot of information that was not necessary but made the article a lot more pleasant to read and brought the events described in it a lot closer to the reader.
Marie Colvin was in Baghdad writing about the crisis in Iraq in January 1991. She wrote a lot of controversial things in the article “Baghdad under Fire'; due to the fact that the general atmosphere was such that any criticism of British or American forces was not seen to be acceptable and there was some censorship of the news by the ministry of defence.
Fergal Keane’s article was written much later in and it was broadcast on Radio 4 as part of the foreign correspondent programme. During the time that Fergal Keane was in Hong Kong he was covering the take over of Hong Kong to China. The BBC were expecting the usual cover of weekly events in the area that Fergal Keane was covering yet what they received was a very personal insight into Fergal Keane’s views and opinions on the take over conveyed in the form of a letter to his five day old son.
Both articles are similar because they mix facts with personal opinion and the subjective and objective converge. The sense of place is evoked right from the start in both articles giving an immediate setting of the scene.

“It is 6 o’clock in the morning on the island of Hong Kong. You are asleep, cradled in my left arm';

Baghdad under Fire takes a slightly more subtle approach giving a description of a man, a place and then bringing it all down with a simple radical statement that confronts the situation reminding you that this is in fact a news article.

“Hussein stood alone in the carpet souk on the eastern bank of the Tigris. The market square of the souk usually bustled at this time of early evening. But it was January 15, the Untied Nations deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

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