I watched ANTV- Truyền hình Công an Nhân dân 24 Hours News for March 28, 2019, a popular Vietnamese news channel. Most of the news reported was about Hà Nội, Vietnam's capital. One of the news reporting was about a drug dealer that pleaded guilty on charges of handling and distribution of cocaine. What I found interesting about this piece of news was the word choice of the anchor when describing the drug addicts. In Vietnamese, we use different words when counting different objects. For example, when counting animals you always put the word "con" in front of whatever animal you are talking about. In this scenario, the word "con" is equivalent to "the." For counting objects, the word changes depending on what you are counting. We can use cái for tables, chairs, TV, refrigerator, and so on, but not for books, candy, boxes, and so on. For people, no word is needed; you only need to use the word for people. When the anchor was talking about the drug addicts, she used the word "con," that is normally used for animals. This suggests that drug users are like animals, in a lowly position, and not worthy of being considered human. I think this could be telling on the attitude of Vietnam on drug users as a whole.
Another thing I noticed was that a lot of the news had to do with major traffic accidents. This slightly surprised me as this is supposed to be 24 hours news so theoretically, all of these traffic accidents happened in one day. While I knew that traffic accidents are common, I was still surprised by the frequency that they seem to be occurring.
Lastly, I also found it fascinating that the police investigations seem to be recorded. I'm not sure if that is the news channel doing a BBC documentary style thing where they have actors reenacting a scene or if they actually got footage of the interrogations done by the police. Either way, both seem kind of strange to me.
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