Lead Review

This lead is from the Miami Herald website. The title of the article is Pedestrian killed by Lauderdale police car.

Lead: A Fort Lauderdale police car, rushing to the scene of a reported shooting, struck and killed a pedestrian on Sistrunk Boulevard Thursday night.

This is your basic summary news lead. It is very quick and to the point. It instantly tells the readers what happened, when it happened and where it happened. I think that for a tragic story like this one, this is the best lead to use. It gets to the point of the story without leading on too much as to what happened. This lead really gets the readers attention, partly because of the tragedy that occurred, and makes them go on to read more of the story.

I like that it was very short and to the point. It left out all the main details, including the victim, the police officer, the fact that it was an undercover car and so much more. This makes the reader want to find out what happened and they must read the rest of the story.

There is not much to dislike about this lead, except for the tragic accident that occurred. This was a very effective lead for this type of story.

Absence of Malice

I felt that Absence of Malice was a very interesting move. From a journalistic viewpoint, the main character played by Sally Fields, is a bad reporter. First off, she did not find out any background information on Michael Gallagher. Secondly, she did not check with multiple sources on the information she did receive. She usually only spoke with one person and wrote her story based on the information she received from that source. Also, when first "receiving" information, she was wrong to use it. She took files that were left on the detective's desk and used that information to write a one sided story putting all the blame on Michael Gallagher's character. She was also very unprofessional in going about her work. She went out on dates with Gallagher and shared alcoholic drinks with him to try to get more information. This is not a wise professional move.

Another problem with Fields' character is when she decided to publish the story on Gallagher's friend who received an abortion. The friend asked if she would not publish what she was telling Fields. However, Fields refused to comply with her and pried the information out of her. Basically, the friend was trying to speak off the record but did not know how to mention that to Fields. Fields did not tell her that she could speak off the record and it would not be in the paper but decided to get the information just so she could write a story. She was very unprofessional and put her job in front of the belief's of this woman.

Sally Fields may have been a good reporter but she made a ton of mistakes. She committed mistake after mistake and each resulted in a terrible consequence. In the end, she and everyone else all got what they deserved when Michael Gallagher set each one of them up. It was a lesson that she needed to learn and she found out the hard way.