Weekly News #3- The Paralympic Legacy of London 2012
12 09 2012
The article “London 2012 Delivers Unexpected Legacy” by CNN’s Piers Edwards, describes the impact of this year’s Paralympic Games on the world. While, in the past, the Paralympics have been underrated and underreported, London changed all of that. It quoted a newspaper in saying “The 2012 Paralympics will live long in the memory as the Games where South Africa and the world learnt that these Games were not the fun games nor the ‘shame’ games.” The article highlighted many different Paralympic athletes and focused on the positive impact that the Games had on viewpoints of disabled people.
This article is very newsworthy because it highlights an event that involves incredible accomplishment, inspires disabled people to continue pursuing their dreams, and highlights the world’s changing perception of disability. It also contained a lot of information about the Games as a whole, and taught me about something that I knew very little about.
However, I thought that it was kind of lazy of the author, as a writer for a major news source, to quote a different newspaper instead of interviewing actually people and coming up with his own ideas. I also thought that the lede was a little misleading, as it didn’t even really mention the Paralympics or athletes with disabilities. I was under the impression that the article was about the regular Olympics until I came across the name of a swimmer that I’d never heard of, and, later down the list, the description “double amputee.” It would have been a lot clearer if the article mentioned that it was about the Paralympics (and not the Olympics) explicitly within the first few sentences.
I agree on your last point, Hannah, that the headline is inaccurate. But as far as the story quoting another newspaper, that I can understand. I think it is trying to show that attitudes towards the disabled have changed in Africa. The US and UK have long supported the paralympics while Africa and Asia have been somewhat slower. I thought the more interesting story last week was the lack of TV coverage of the games here in the US. Less than 40 hours I think someone reported. It had to be even less than that here in Sioux City. I saw no coverage other than brief reports on the news.