Second Essay

Here is my second essay where I compare that same story given by two different news sources:


Al Jazeera
'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death

Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali", has been sentenced to death for ordering the gassing of Kurds in the Iraqi village of Halabja, state television has reported.
Al-Majid, who was a senior aide to Saddam Hussein, the executed Iraqi leader, was sentenced to be hanged for the 1988 attack, in which 5,000 Kurds are thought to have died.
Families of some victims cheered in court when the guilty verdict was handed down on Sunday.
"The decision has been issued today, January 17, to sentence Ali Hassan al-Majid, to death by hanging ... for crimes against humanity," Aref Abdul-Razzaq al-Shahin, the head of the court, said.
The Iraqi High Tribunal also sentenced three other Saddam aides, including the former defence minister, to 10 to 15 years in prison for the Halabja attack.
In March 1988, Iraqi jets swooped over the village and sprayed it with a deadly mix of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX.
Three-quarters of the victims in the five-hour assault were women and children. It is thought to have been the deadliest gas attack ever carried out against civilians.
Operation Anfal
Al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam, was nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for overseeing the gassing of Iraqi Kurds during the so-called Operation Anfal campaign, which culminated in 1988.
About 182,000 Kurds were estimated to have been killed in gas and bomb attacks during the Anfal operation, while 4,000 villages were destroyed.
The latest sentence comes 10 months after the same court handed down a death sentence to al-Majid for his involvement in the killing and displacement of Shia Muslims in 1999.
He had already received death sentences for crushing a Shia revolt soon after the 1991 Gulf War and for his role in the Anfal campaign.
His execution has been delayed by legal disputes over his conviction.
Al-Majid was captured in August 2003, five months after US-led forces invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam.
Saddam's cousin gets 4th death sentence
Last Updated: Sunday, January 17, 2010 12:56 PM ET

CBC News
Saddam Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, was sentenced to death in Baghdad on Sunday, the fourth such sentence for the man notoriously known as Chemical Ali.
Al-Majid was handed the punishment for his involvement in the poison gas attack on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja in which over 5,000 children, women and men died.
Hussein appointed Al-Majid as governor of Northern Iraq and charged him with carrying out the deadly attack on March 16, 1988.
Like the previous three death sentences, Sunday's decision from the court was for crimes against humanity in Iraq.
The previous three have not been carried out, in part because survivors of the gas attack wanted to have their case against al-Majid heard.
Families of some of the victims cheered in court when the guilty verdict was handed down.
Other officials in Saddam's regime received jail terms for their roles in the attack on Halabja, a Kurdish town near the Iranian border.
Former defence minister Sultan Hashim al-Taie faces 15 years in prison, as does Iraq's former director of military intelligence, Sabir Azizi al-Douri.
Al-Majid has already been convicted of killing tens of thousands of Kurds in a crackdown in the late 1980s, and for the killings of Shia Muslims in 1991 and 1999.












Peter Rubino
News Article Comparison

In this assignment which we were given, we are supposed to compare the same news story as told by both western news agencies and eastern news agencies. The goal was to compare and contrast to show the difference in how the same information was presented to different people by different people. This specific news story that I have chosen is about the sentencing of a middle-eastern war criminal inside a courtroom in Iraq. Indeed there are many things between the two specific articles that may be compared and contrasted.
The story that I have decided to cover is the sentencing of war criminal Ali Hassan al-Majid. He recently received his fourth death sentence by an Iraqi court. This sentence is for his gassing of the Kurds in Northern Iraq in 1988 Kurdish town of Halabja in which over 5,000 children, women and men died. This was the largest use of chemical weapons against civilian population in history. This was part of a larger campaign, called operation Anfal, in which civilian 180,000 Kurds were killed by the Iraqi government.
One point of comparison is of the length and setup of the two articles. The story as told by CBC contains 209 words broken into 9 paragraphs, with the average word being about 5 letters long. The story reported by Al Jazeera contains 320 words broken into 13 paragraphs, with the same average word length. It is also noteworthy in noting that in both the article written by CBC and the article written by Al Jazeera, the first paragraph mentions that Chemical Ali was convicted and sentenced to death and the second paragraph mentions why he was given a sentence.
One of the reasons why the report written by Al Jazeera may have been over one hundred words longer than the report written by CBC is that Al Jazeera is a Middle East news station and this is a story that has occurred in the Middle East. CBC, however is part of the American news media conglomerate. Therefore Al Jazeera was physically closer to the event. Thus people who read Al Jazeera may expect more in depth coverage of the events since people in the Middle East are closer the events themselves and thus care more about local or semi local news as opposed to an American who is much further away.
One major structural difference is the presentation of “Operation Anfal”. CBC mentions the gassing, but does not go into deeper depths about the Baathist’s campaign to purge the Kurds. Al Jazeera gives an entire section about the horrific background behind the operation, and lists more facts. The reason why they do this is that this operation was probably much more memorable and notable to a Middle Eastern viewer than to an American one.
Ali Hassan al-Majid was also given three separate other death sentences for three other war crimes. The version told by Al Jazeera makes it more clear exactly what these crimes were, saying “The latest sentence comes… after the same court handed down a death sentence to al-Majid for his involvement in the killing and displacement of Shia Muslims in 1999. He had already received death sentences for crushing a Shia revolt soon after the 1991 Gulf War and for his role in the Anfal campaign.” The CBC story briefly mentioned these crimes, but did not include as much detail.
A pertinent question on the minds of the readers of these stories might be “why have the other death sentences not been carried out?” This is a valid question, but here is where the two articles digress in terms of language used to present the fact. The Al Jazeera article mentions “legal disputes over his conviction” which is vague, and sounds passive. The article by CBC stated that the victims of the horrific attacks wanted to have their case heard in court, which is more specific.
The Al Jazeera article also mentions that to al-Majid will be hung to death, a fact skipped over by CBC. Perhaps CBC didn’t want to mention the hanging, because to a Western viewer hanging seems like a cruel and brutal punishment. This would have humanized him, probably more so to a western viewer. In reality though, there are far more brutal things that could have been done to somebody whose war-crimes are so ghastly. Hanging may be a brutal way to die, but it is far less severe than say, handing him over to the Peshmerga.
However there are some instances where the language used by the two different news articles is almost identical. For example, CBC reported that “Families of some of the victims cheered in court when the guilty verdict was handed down.” This is very similar in the statement made by Al Jazeera, which says “Families of some victims cheered in court when the guilty verdict was handed down on Sunday.”
Perhaps the most surprising thing in comparing these two articles is not how much they differ, but how much they agree with, and compliment each other. The both essentially give the facts of the trial, and the outcome in the same manner. The Al Jeezera article has a more in depth coverage, and mentions more facts, but other than that they are both pretty similar.