https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46814557

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/business/jeff-bezos-wife-mackenzie-divorce.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-his-wife-mackenzie-divorce-n956621

             Jeff and his wife MacKenzie.

           The story of this billionaire divorce began when Jeff Bezos, Forbes number one richest man in the world and founder of huge online retail platform Amazon, tweeted in early January 2019 that he was getting a divorce from his wife of 25 years MacKenzie Bezos.

             Several mainstream and entertainment media outlets reported that the marriage crashed due to Jeff allegedly cheating on his wife with a woman identified as Lauren Sanchez, a former anchor for Fox’s local station in Los Angeles. This divorce has got everyone talking including the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, who tweeted about Jeff Bezos divorce.

Priming effect- From the BBC News article in the 1st link above, notice how it’s titled ”Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie divorce.” If the article was titled ”Jeff Bezos and his wife divorce” a lot of readers who probably don’t know who he is would scroll past this article to the next news that they are familiar with. The inclusion of Amazon boss unconsciously gets the  attention of the readers and suggests to them that the divorce is going to be expensive and widely talked about. 

             Also, in the BBC article, notice how immediately after the title is a picture of Jeff and his wife looking well groomed, properly attired and beaming with smiles. Furthermore, the caption immediately below the picture reads “the pair said that they had a great life together.”  This is a good example of visual priming. They did not put up a picture of the couple looking sad or distracted and caption it as “the pair said that they had a great life together.”

Cognitive ease – Take note of how familiar, non-bogus words were used in all the news articles linked above. The sentences were kept as simple as possible and the paragraphs were well spaced and short, thereby making the information easy to understand. Also, pictures were included in the article.  They know that adding visual elements to a text will make the audience ”digest” the article easily. All of these are strategic moves taken by the news sites for easy comprehension of the articles.

           Still on cognitive ease, in the BBC article (link 1), notice how the estimated wealth was written in the shortest way possible; $797bn instead of 797,000,000,000 dollars, $789bn instead of 789,000,000,000 dollars. They replaced the zeros with a short form of the word ”billion” and used ”$” instead of writing dollars. They know that writing out the zeros requires more cognitive effort from the readers to process.

Disinterest – Did you notice that the three news sites above reported this divorce story with an ethical appeal of disinterest? They reported the story without stating their own opinion on the divorce, thereby allowing the audience to form their own opinion of the divorce. 

Stereotyping – As seen in the news article above published by the New York Times (link 2), the sentence “As is the case in any celebrity split, the financial details of the divorce are sure to be complicated despite the couple’s vow to remain cherished friends.” is a classic example of stereotyping.                                                                      

            Notice how they subtly implied that the financial details of any celebrity divorce is complicated and Jeff Bezos and his wife will not be exempt from this. They are suggesting that when celebrity couples divorce,  splitting their assets often pose a problem. The New York times published that sentence with no evidence to back it up, thereby stimulating the minds of their audience to think that any celebrity split is usually accompanied by financial complications. This sentence is particularly unfair to celebrity couples who have been able to part ways amicably with no problems in dividing their assets.

Framing – The BBC website (link 1) did not say for a fact that the cheating allegation caused the divorce but they made sure to include in the divorce announcement report that there are media outlets alleging that Jeff Bezos was linked romantically with Laura Sanchez during his marriage and even included in the article a TMZ link that covered the story of the alleged infidelity. The way this report was framed makes it easy and tempting for the audience to think that Jeff’s alleged infidelity crashed his marriage. Whatever information the couple wanted to be made known to the public was put out via their personal twitter accounts and the tweets certainly did not include the reason why they decided to end their marriage.