Week 4: Student Response to Discussion One and Two and Assignment

ThursdayOct 26 at 1:38am

Manage Discussion Entry

The report described some of the aspects of Spanish society and the political culture there that led to the referendum and the central government crackdown. An allusion to the Spanish dictatorship and civil war during the 20th century provided background to the current events (Minder & Barry, 2017). Furthermore, the complexity and sensitivity of a country that allows such self-governance of regions within its borders interested me. I suppose a similar situation in the United States might be if one of the Native American nations within the United Stated declared full independence and absolute sovereignty.

A description of the attitudes Catalan citizens and government officials from Catalan and the central government held in response to the referendum provided the human element necessary to draw an emotional link between the reader and those people featured in the article.

There was not a comparison or contrast to events in the United States. This distinction might be considered a risk to The New York Times since Americans typically aren't interested in news that does not relate to them in some way (Graber & Dunaway, 2015, p.9.1). Given the reporters were international correspondents assigned in Spain and India, their point of view might not have been uniquely American so they could have been looking at the problem from the viewpoint of one living in Spain or Catalonia.

The tone of the article was not critical, but instead provided a very even-handed description of the history and impacts of the story from a Catalonian and Spanish perspective, accounting for the viewpoint of people from different walks of society. The photographs also showed both sides of the contentious issue, and the facts and statistics cited were not biased toward one side or the other.

- Joel Seppala

References

Graber, D., Dunaway, J. (2015). Mass Media and American Politics, Ninth Ed. Sage Publications, Inc:Â Thousand Oaks, California.

Minder, R, Barry, E. (2017, October 1). Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos Clashes. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/world/europe/catalonia-independence-referendum.html