Cliche Pet Stories

By Joyce Choi

Our fresh David Kaplan Memorial Fellow at ABC News in D.C., MA Convergence (YEAH!) Jia Zhou said ABCnews.com is the first U.S. news Web site she browsed in China. So I checked out the site, scrolled down the front page and saw this Dog Saves The Day And His Owner .

Pet stories suddenly become such a cliche to me. The video is so much worse than the ones we have seen in class. The anchor's lead-in, "Petlovers, better grab some hankies for this one." not only seems to make the news story more trivial, this line actually makes the whole story breaks down when I found that the story isn't at all touching to me. This lead-in makes me distrust the anchor, think he is pretentious, and eventually cannot effectively relate me to the story.

The voice-over is nicely written. I like the detail about the dog bringing the telephone for its owner to dial 911. However, the visuals are totally uninteresting. We can only see human for the first quarter, and nothing human afterwards. Well, probably the reporter is trying to depict the tragedy with "humanlessness"?

Indeed, it is hard and IMPOSSIBLE to capture the fire and the dog saving the family and the cat. But, can't the reporter at least obtain a photo of the dog with the owner and slice it in the VO? Let's say the owner does not have such photo, probably the reporter may research for a photo of a Labrador? In terms of relevance, the visuals do connect with the VO when the script mentions the specific spots of the house.

I would say the tone the anchor conveys the story is more of a straight-news style. There is nothing wrong, but if pet stories do not contain emotions - they may just lose their news value altogether.