Cold Facts and Warm Hearts: Hard News vs Soft

The CBC article "Canadian resident sentenced to death in Iran" is the very definition of hard news. The hard hitting title combined with the concise and uncompromising stating of the facts paint pictures of torture and injustice abroad. The entire article conveys a sense of helplessness, both in the situation of the accused, Saeed Malekpour, and in the situation closer to home. The fact that Canada can't swoop in and save this man from his death is a fact that is brutally and plainly laid out for the reader. There are no soft touches, no kind words in this article, only the facts of forced confession and unjust torture. The quotes, which include statements like "Most of the time, the tortures were performed by a group," are uncompromising. This article is hard news with a vengeance.

Another story that personifies hard news is the article "Haiti cholera death toll tops 2,000" from the CBC website. Obviously, stories of tragic death are hard news. This is so much the more when there has not only been one tragic death, but over 2,000. This story gives us a very grim view of the situation in Haiti, and does so without reserve. The facts are put forth without any comforting assurances that Haitian happy days are just around the corner, quite the opposite in fact. The number of people afflicted by the disease(over 91,700) and the death count (over 2,000) are stated plainly, and the situation is reported just as it is: dire.

Now, we'll avoid the system shock of going straight from hard news to soft by looking at one that's in the gray area between the two, namely CBC's "Spider-Man working out bugs for Broadway debut". This one is hard to place mostly because of its shameless blending of comic book lore(soft) and the problems besetting a 65 million dollar Broadway production (hard). It strikes a fair balance between hard and soft by incorporating the best of both; for soft news, the article goes into great detail concerning the history of the play, from the beginning of the writing process nine years ago to the present, one month before opening night. However, it doesn't shy away from the hard news aspects either, bluntly describing the many hitches and troubles currently afflicting the technical aspects of the play, such as perfecting the devices which will allow Spider-Man to scale the walls. However, if I had to classify it as one or the other, I would classify it as soft news, because the soft news aspects of the story get much greater attention.

Just as it's usually easy to spot hard news, it's just as simple to spot soft news, and boy is this article ever soft. The article looks at something many people who work in a cubicle use to relax, casual video games. News about casual video games is soft news indeed, for obvious reasons. First of all, they're games. Second, they're the kind of games specifically designed to be simple, rewarding, and relaxing for the player. Much like the article on Spider-Man theater above, this article is soft news because it goes into the history of the game and explores where the game came from, instead of what focusing solely on what it's doing right here and now.

"Dark Genius" doesn't exactly sound like something one would classify as soft news. However, the title describes the subject of the article(Tim Burton) quite well. This soft article isn't even really news so much as it is a tribute to the career of Burton. The news side of the story/tribute comes from the opening of a gallery that showcases much of Tim Burton's work. The story has a distinctly personal touch, with many quotes from Burton himself explaining his feelings about the gallery. It discusses many of Tim Burton's influences from his youth, and concerns itself mostly with the artistic, the theoretical and imaginary than with cold facts and faceless figures. In closing the article, there is a quote from Tim Burton concerning thank-you notes that he got from parents who brought their teenage children there. The personal side of the story is embraced fully, making this soft news without a doubt.