ABSTRACT
This chapter and the next will focus on those types of news stories often referred to as ‘accidents’, ‘disasters’, ‘chance events’, ‘mishaps’, and sometimes ‘personal tragedies’. Although these labels are imprecise I wish to retain them for the moment in order to make some initial comments on the contours of these stories, how they have been handled by some news studies and in more general commentaries on news. Once this has been done, there will be an attempt to refine these terms, not necessarily changing them, but offering a more systematic analysis of the news stories to which they frequently refer.
