Top News Story Week 5

‘Jena 6’ teen’s case to be heard in juvenile court governor says


I first heard this story in one of my mass communication class’s and was surprised why I did not hear about this story that much in the media. It began with some white teenagers hanging nooses on an oak tree at a high school and escalated into six black teenagers beating up a white teenager. Prosecutors originally charged all six black students with second-degree attempted murder and conspiracy in the school yard beating. The court ruled that the students should have been tried in the juvenile court system instead of the adult since the teenagers were 16 years old. The story is very controversial because many people feel that the black students are being punished to extreme and the story has many racial controversies.

The news values that this story has are conflict and currency and impact. The conflict is obvious in the story and it shows by the march with Martin Luther King III and Al Sharpton. The issue is current and the impact is very large, because depending on how the trial goes this will be a major current civil rights event.