[大英二unt4课文.docxVIP

Making the headlines1?It isnt very often that the media lead with the same story everywhere in the world. Such an event would have to be of enormous international significance. But this is exactly what occurred in September 2001 with the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. It is probably not exaggerated to say that from that moment the world was a different place. 2?But it is not just the historical and international dimension that made 9/11 memorable and (to use a word the media like) newsworthy. It was the shock and horror, too. So striking, so sensational, was the news that, years after the event, many people can still remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard it. They can remember their own reactions: For many people across the globe their first instinct was to go and tell someone else about it, thus providing confirmation of the old saying that bad news travels fast. 3?And so it is with all major news stories. I remember when I was at primary school the teacher announcing pale-faced to a startled class of seven year olds President Kennedy is dead. I didnt know who President Kennedy was, but I was so upset at hearing the news that I went rushing home afterwards to tell my parents (who already knew, of course). In fact, this is one of my earliest memories. 4?So what exactly is news? The objective importance of an event is obviously not enough —there are plenty of enormous global issues out there, with dramatic consequences, from poverty to global warming—but since they are ongoing, they dont all make the just international, but odd, unexpected, and (in the sense that it was possible to identify with the plight of people caught up in the drama) very human. 5?Odd doesnt mean huge. Take the story in todays China Daily about a mouse holding up a flight from Vietnam to Japan. The mouse was spotted running down the aisle of a plane in Hanoi airport. It was eventually caught by a group of 12 te