Article Critique

"Somali Pirates Hijack Fourth Vessel in a Week"

On CNN's website, this title caught my eye, and a very short, somewhat disjointed but nonetheless informative article followed. As far as I could tell, the story was accurate; every time a fact or believed fact was stated, it was followed by the source of the information. This article was little else but facts, mostly pertaining to the nationality of the hijacked ship's crew members, the country or origin of the ships in question, when and where the ships were taken. As there was nothing but the statement of facts, there was complete objectivity in this article; it was little more than bullet point modified into loose paragraphs.

One thing that did, however, bother me, was the disjointed way in which things were stated. In an article less than 6 paragraphs long, the phrase "the naval force said" is used 10 times, and additionally, the phrase "it said" (also referring to the British naval force) is used twice. This strikes me as a rough draft of a larger article. The bare bones are there; facts, sources and storyline, but in my opinion this article should have been given a bit more attention. If it were me in the CNN editing room, I would not have posted this story as it is now. There could have been a bit more back story toward the end of the article, bringing up the recent spike in acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, and why geography puts so many large tankers with precious payloads in such notoriously dangerous international waters. If there wasn't time to add that much depth to the story, one would at least reread the standing article and attempt to assemble it in such a way that a single source would only need to be stated once, and delete the other nine times it is stated as a source.

Though the article stayed true to the title and simply and briefly stated the facts of the events, I feel it could have done so in a more cohesive, intelligible manner, and possibly there could have been more meat added to the story if it had been looked over more than once.