Other Story Archs (Part 1)

I have been thinking about story archs for some of the scholarship applications I am looking at (how do I tell a coherent story about my interests in 500 words of less) and also reading a lot of news. Because of this I got curious about how other regions’ news sources tell the same story as US/European sources at the same time. For example, I had been hearing about a picture which captivated the Chinese Blogosphere (or at least part of it) of the handicapped athlete having the Olympic Torch ripped away from her by a Tibet protester (US news sources called them “free Tibet” protesters. China Daily, where I got this picture, called them “Tibetan separatists”). It’s the kind of meme which shows up so many places it is hard to track. I have seen this one mentioned in comments on articles and blogs, but it took me a while to finally find a copy of it:

(In case this was horrific enough, the man pushing her wheelchair in a blind athlete. yeah.)

This story focused on the valor of the athlete and the violence of the protesters. I guess with all of the news this week, the Paris protests seemed more outrageously aggressive than violent (no one fired into the crowd and no one was killed). China Daily also made no mention of the powder-puff blue garbed Chinese guards (the Economist called them “thugs”) who menaced protesters (ineffectually it seems) away from the athletes in Paris and San Francsico.

Next time: Al Jazeera’s take on Israel at 60 is surprisingly balanced.

Inspirational Quote:

“He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.” about Andrew Malcolm