Knowing Your Audience Essay

The Chilean mine cave-in was a devastating incident that had a massive impact on many lives, filling the media across the globe. When approaching the audience about this incident there are many different considerations to remember. How we confront our audience when speaking of a tragedy must be very sensitive to the subject and not too much to the point. This can flare sensitivities of the audience and can cause for emotional catastrophe. Many times media tends to approach the audience with an indirect statement such as “a collapsed mine today traps 30 workers underground”, this allows the audience to soak what they are about to see or hear about prior to the story is broadcasted. There are several things that a writer or broadcaster could do to warn the audience of the danger of this mine and that the company (San Esteban Mining Company) is notorious for working unsafe mines (Wikipedia.org). These things may not necessarily make the incident easier for the audience to digest, but it may help them to understand that each miner enters the mine at their own risk and is aware of the dangers of the industry when entering a mine, Chile averages 34 deaths per year, in mining accidents, since 2000. The miner’s families should have received a written letter of apology and condolences from the San Esteban Mining Company for the tragedy that took place under their watch. These types of incidents could be and should have been prevented with proper safety inspections. The miner’s families should be entitled to compensation from the Chilean mining company in order to cover bills that could not be covered while their spouses or significant others are trapped nearly 1000 feet under the surface. The company should offer the families anything they may need at their expense in order to make this matter easier on them. A company must always be very careful when writing a letter of condolences and meeting with the families face-to-face (which would be more appropriate to discuss a tragedy) so that they do not confuse the families of what has happened in this type of incident. The families have no choice but to believe in a sense that their family member is deceased though neither they nor the company know for sure if this is the case. The company’s employees would be entitled to a message from the company stating what has happened in this incident and reassure them that though this is a tragic occurrence that they will be and are doing everything they can to find out exactly what happened and to reopen the mine in order to check for survivors. If this message is not delivered properly and efficiently it could cause miners to seek other employment and choose to refuse certain types of work in areas of the mine in which they feel as if it is too dangerous to work in such as the San Joes site, that has had eight deaths in the past 12 years. Before a message is delivered, to

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