The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the differences and similarities of active and passive news and how the two inform the reader. I focused my research upon one item of the news, one that was shown both as visual and passive, and looked at the different aspects that television news, and print news hold. I chose to focus on the Samantha O'Reily topic. This was a murder case that had been concurrent since the 3rd of January 2003, where a young Adelaide teenage girl, was taken from her home. It tells of Samantha O'Rielys death, why it happened, how it happened and the suspects, and the follow up cases occurring prior to her death. This topic was presented on both the Channel 10 news, at 5pm, and then the Channel 7 news, at 6pm. The following day I looked through the paper, and found an article on the same topic in The Advertiser, on page 17. I chose this story, because i felt as if the print and visual news would generate the same audience, and therefore it would leave me a clearer view on the media differences, rather then the different target audiences. .
Active news is normally presented as an article in the newspaper, detailing the most important information at the start of the article, then continuing on to that of lesser importance. Active news is spread amongst the newspaper, and when reading it, the reader can chose which articles concern them. Passive news is presented on the television, where a journalist reads the news to you, this offers less depth of analysis because visualizations of the topic are often shown, which leaves less time for detail. Normally when watching the news on television, those shown at the beginning are most important, but in order to view one topic, you must watch the whole news, rather then being able to skip through it, and only view the topics you wish, like you would in a newspaper. The news on television is often easier to watch for those who do not have the time to sit down and read the paper, it offers and sum-up of the main stories at the end which clarifies the days news on a quick term basis.