Multimedia Aspects of The Orlando Shooting

I was sitting on my couch scrolling through social media and then all of the sudden by storm there was tweet’s,text and facebook posts all regarding the horrific Orlando Shooting. This shooting was being described as one of the greatest tragedies in United States history. To think, within a matter of seconds so many lives were lost and so many families were going to suffer. On Sunday, June 12 in an Orlando nightclub 49 people were killed and 53 wounded. This is the deadliest mass shooting in America to date. This week I was asked to look into the several different ways news stations are using multimedia to cover this tragic event. It is events like these that make journalism so crucial with keeping the public up to date and provide the truth in the best light possible.

Text, audio, video, and photography are the key elements of multimedia story telling. I took a look at CNN and NPR to see what elements and approaches they took with informing the public.

CNN did a great job with covering the victims. They used video to show the affect on loved ones and victims themselves. Multiple people were interviewed and they incorporated scenes from the club and videos from the victims inside as well. I think the strongest part of the article was how CNN did a paragraph on each victim and supplied a photo of the person next to the biography. There are also quotes from loved ones incorporated into the small biography of each victim.

NPR took a slightly different approach when covering the shooting. They used a photo to start the article off and provide great text underneath with background information. The next photo is an aerial shot of the club that breaks up more text. NPR adds a subtitle indicating topic change and now focuses on the shooter providing text and a picture. Following the text and picture of the shooter there is a video of raw footage from the time of the shooting outside the club. NPR then shifts focus to the attack itself providing various images to break up text and adding context. The story also covers the investigation so far and the mourning of the victims. The end of the article is a google map showing where exactly the shooting took place. I thought it was an interesting way to end the article by providing the google map satellite directions.

Overall both news outlets took different approaches when covering the shooting but did a wonderful job in keep the public informed