Complicated is an understatment!

After reading through the article I was pretty convinced that “complicated” was the wrong word for the headline. I think a better word in its place could be something to the effect of abusive. One of the first things that crossed my mind was how much this didn’t seem like what I was fighting for in class. I feel as though Fox news just shot a gaping hole in my argument during the debate. Yes I know we said that as viewers’ people should double check their sources but really now, this is Fox News and they are just stripping the democracy right out of journalism. I still believe that when you do watch the news or read it, or however you normally access your information you should still check another source but I don’t feel like I should have to watch two programs just to get the other side of the story. That is something I associate with a grassroots type of media where it is not their profession and they can just provide you the information they choose to. Fox News is a huge corporation and I feel that especially being so large they should bring all sides of the story, it is their job!

I found another website that gave some statistics about who watches Fox News right now and how the 2012 election can be a new experience entirely when it comes to voting. The article explains, “Whereas 78 percent of likely voters who say they are Fox News viewers support Republican candidates, 58 percent of viewers of CNN and MSNBC and 45 percent of broadcast network viewers say they will vote Democratic in November’s House races.” This is not a big surprise nor am I really surprised that Fox is taking advantage of the potential they have, what does shock me however is how this is happening. How on this earth in a democratic society are we allowing this sort of behavior, sponsorship, and to be truthful, censorship to occur. According to thesaurus.com a synonym for democracy is “representative government”. Representative government leads me to believe representative press; unfortunately it is looking like we are moving as far away from that as possible.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/from-poll-a-snapshot-of-fox-news-viewers/?ref=politics

Can Media Regain Public Trust?

The question at hand is “Can Media Regain Public Trust”? When I read these articles I tend to read the summary then the postscript and then go back through the article. I think this is helpful because it can help you make your case for or against a certain side. Doing this also makes it easier to pick out inconsistencies in the stories.

I found that the postscript didn’t so much summarize what the two articles had to say; rather it gave new factual information about normative theory and social responsibility theory of the press. One phrase that I have heard time and time again is, “with rights come obligations” (172). The book asked us how we think the current media system does at fulfilling these goals. It is my belief that the media has an obligation to bring the community the truth, but also what they want which don’t necessarily contradict one another but they sometimes hinder the ability for the media to be well rounded.

This brings us to my opinion of Schudson’s article. I found humor in Schudson’s article because his efforts were not so much directed at the main question, “Can Media Regain Public Trust?” rather he proved to us that the media remains “unlovable.” He does this purposely. I think he brings up a great point when it is mentioned that journalists, “get in the face of power” (151). This is done, or so he says to basically keep democracy from facing great danger. I agree that the press being “unlovable” does enable the media to be more effective.

I think when it comes to the press; personally I know I have selective hearing. Sometimes, to be honest they are my own biases that stand in the way of me gaining knowledge of current news, (I’m only human though). But hey, all I can do is try and remind myself to be objective. I believe because of ethics, codes and so forth that the news should bring us up to speed with real facts and figures but occasionally I have my doubts.

Governor Race

This is just some of the information I found about the elections. Some of the Websites had commercials and youtube videos:

www.wikipedia.com

1)      Elections will take place November 2, 2010 (primaries were on June 8)

2)      New elected governor will serve 2011-2015

3)      Democratic Candidate is Jerry Brown

a)      Current California Attorney General

b)      Former governor of CA

4)      Republican candidate is Meg Whitman

a)      Business woman – former CEO of eBay

http://www.megwhitman.com/

1)      Goals = create jobs, cut spending, fix education

2)      Wants to build largest women’s coalition ever seen in national politics

3)      Graduated from Princeton with a degree in economics

4)      Attended Harvard business school for her MBA

www.mercurynews.com

1)      Meg Whitman called off jury duty

2)      Meg Whitman would probably veto global warming law

3)      Jerry Brown aired first commercial: “Knowledge and know how to get California working again”.

4)      Meg Whitman stands behind add against Jerry Brown

a.       Ongoing debate about past interview with Bill Clinton, CNN made a mistake

b.      Jerry Brown comparing Meg Whitman to Pinocchio

5)      Whitman is largest personal contributer to campaign.

a.       Surpassed Michael Bloomberg with $119 million

6)      Jerry Brown states that republicans and democrats cannot work together

7)      Meg doesn’t believe in a majority, like Oakland voting

8)      Meg asked JB a question:

a.       Why were 4 out of 8 of your budgets not passed on time? How are you going to bring people together

9)      JB asked Meg:

a.       How come you are going to eliminate capital gains tax?

                                                              i.      It will just make her and people in her social standing more rich

 By Steven Harmon

Bay Area News Group

Posted: 09/05/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

·                                
WHAT'S THE CLAIM? The campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has aired a radio ad that takes aim at Jerry Brown's time as Oakland mayor. The announcer claims the current scandal about public salaries in Bell echoes Brown's tenure as mayor: "In Jerry Brown's Oakland, city workers were paid for 22,000 hours that they never worked. The total number of city workers making $200,000 a year went up 700 percent. And under Jerry Brown, Oakland's city administrator gave herself $60,000 in bonuses."

The ad also says Brown "supported $500 million in higher property taxes and pushed for higher fees and taxes."

IS IT TRUE? Some of the facts are in dispute, while others appear to lack context.

It's true that while Brown was mayor, the number of those who drew salaries of more than $200,000 rose from five to 42 -- 31 of whom were firefighters. But that was a one-time bump, according to Brown's campaign, because the Oakland City Council in 2006 approved a lump-sum payment of $1.3 million in back overtime to firefighters who were shortchanged by an accounting error.

The accusations about bonuses, vacation days and overbillings were made in a lawsuit by a fired city controller whose claims Oakland has denied in court; the case is pending.
As for the $500 million in new taxes, they'll be assessed over decades and were approved by more than two-thirds of Oakland voters to reduce class sizes, increase teacher salaries, purchase textbooks, keep libraries open and give students elective classes they need to qualify for University of California and California State University admissions

Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement?

In the very beginning of the article it asked the reader to think of one way in which journalism needs to improve. The first thing that popped into my head was obtaining primary sources. I just can’t seem to shake what went on the air in San Bruno the night of the explosion. I’m not so much concerned with the fact that people were concerned about it being a plane crash, but what I am upset about is giving false information about the help that was on scene. Everyone in that situation had a right to be panicked and upset and unnerved about what was happening but what was not fair was to automatically throw blame upon the lack of people there to assist. One reporter let a young man on live television saying things like, “where is everyone to help?” I can say for a fact they were there. Did he know for instance that the first fire truck rushed to the scene and because of the extreme heat, the windshield shattered? They had to back off and go in by foot. So back to the question of what I think needs work is obtaining primary sources and I suppose this comes down to honoring some sort of journalistic code of ethics.

When we look at the title of this article it reads, “Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement”? The first thing that crossed my mind was; improvement from what? There is not a subtopic specific enough to start with, but I went with it as much as I could. I think the first article was not setting up a strong enough argument, repeating over and over how most innovative and newer forms of journalistic coverage do not focus on the hard-core topics such as politics, rather they follow James Carey’s model of Communication which we have talked about earlier. One thing I did like however was the term, “produsers”. Maybe I liked it just because it seemed out of the box but the meaning does make sense and it does apply to what is occurring in the journalism world today.

The side that argues for “no” is fairly concise but I think I agree with what is there. David Simon in his testimony makes one very strong point and that is that being a journalist is a profession, it requires years and years of research and knowledge. Participatory journalism is more of an “add as you go” or “add as you find”. It seems silly to compare a story that has been written by a journalist of twenty years to the same topic written by a civilian journalist. While the information may be strong in both cases it is obvious that the journalist who has been doing this a majority of his/her life will have a better story because of pure knowledge.

"Fake News" vs. "Network News"

The two video clips I watched for the assignment both covered Meghan McCain and her recent book titled, Dirty, Sexy, Politics. To be brief, I noticed that on The Daily Show the amount of silly statements far outnumbered those on the Fox Interview. Also there was constant laughing and smiling and an overall different atmosphere present. On the Fox Interview clip it was much more conscise and dry but they both tried to get the same information from her.

Does Fake News Mislead the Public?

To start, when I was reading these articles I saw a glimpse of last week’s readings in terms of contradiction. On the side of Julia Fox she compares The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and broadcasting network news coverage. I thought the evaluation of the two would be interesting but when I saw the findings I thought to myself, why would she put that in her argument? According to the results the study “found Stewart’s program to be just as substantive as the broadcast networks’ campaign coverage, regardless of whether the story or the program was used as the unit of analysis” (183). The study also showed that viewers tend to remember this sort of comical information as apposed to regular broadcasting and are more likely to encode more of the information presented to them on shows like The Daily Show.

What I liked from Hollander’s point of view was his insight into the question about how much is “actually learned from entertainment television” (192). I also his comment about how there are many other factors that do influence one’s “processing strategies and information processing” (192). These include things “such as political sophistication, cognitive ability, and motivation” (192). I suppose I am most looking forward to discussing this in class today. I thought Fox momentarily buried herself in her argument and I enjoyed Hollander’s point of view but since The Daily Show isn’t the best example of fake news since it was proven to have the same amount of substantive information I am left undecided at this moment.

Blog 2 Two Sides of the Story (well kind of)

I chose to watch videos about the upcoming Koran burning on September eleventh. First I watched Hardball with Chris Matthews and it was easy to see how he felt about the event. Not only that but he interviewed one of the Pastors in Florida, Wayne Sapp and you could tell that he was not making the questions easy for him. Chris Matthews inquired as to what he thought was going to happen to the American soldiers; he also had him watch a clip from a General in Afghanistan who basically paralleled him to extremists. Chris Matthews also stated that there are one billion Islamic people in the world so why would he want them to react. The most interesting part of the whole video for me was when Reverend Welton Gaddy from the Interfaith Alliance came on and he said that, “this is not about American Patriotism, not about Christianity, not about religion. It is about hatred and divisiveness and a person who while saying Muslims want to control the world, he wants to control the world”. One thing that was a bit different was that he had a clip from Hilary Clinton who stated that she is hoping that the burning of the Korans will not be covered as an act of Patriotism. There was no mention of Obama or a segment of one of Obama’s interviews or speeches. After watching this I definitely felt confirmed in my belief that it will be a huge mistake to burn the Korans. I can see how someone who wasn’t sure however would be swayed due to the lack of balance in interview questions between the Pastor who was not given much chance to look knowledgeable and the Reverend of the Interfaith Alliance who was given much time to speak.




As for Glenn Beck he did not have any segment of a show devoted to this yet so instead I watched a video clip on Foxnews.com. It was brief but it did have a quick interview with Obama in which he said that the act the Pastor’s are taking is a, “recruitment bonanza for the Al-Qaeda” and they are acting “completely contrary to our values as Americans”. This video was short but the footage they got was impressive and directly from the source. Personally I liked Chris Matthews coverage better, I felt as though it gave both sides of the story even though it was obvious that he was giving the Pastor a hard time.

Are American Values Shaped by the Mass Media?

Upon first reading the title of the article I was sure that my blog response would be a no-brainer, however, these two points of view shared many new and interesting sides of the argument. I think that many people today would be willing to admit that the Mass Media does shape American Values. In years past this could have seemed to be the easy way out, now at least in my opinion many Americans would not be ashamed to say they have been too easily swayed by advertisements, news programming, and other forms of media to believe or trust in one thing or another. Professor Schiller creates a sound argument with an outline of why he is certain that the Mass Media takes on more of a role as a “Mind Manager”. James Carey however takes an opposite approach searching more deeply into the past and focuses more on the social aspect of the communication process in society. I have seen James Carey’s work in the past on the Transmission Model of Communication and the Ritual Model of Communication so I will refer to those later.




After reading the selected passages that Schiller and Carey had to offer I was not forced, yet eased into making my decision that, yes, indeed the Mass Media does shape American Values and this is why:



It is widespread knowledge that the news shows and personalities are competing to tell you the same information. Years back before the technology was so readily available it seemed more likely that these individuals and programs had to work harder to sell you what they wanted you to believe. In Schiller’s passage he mentions that, “the multichannel communications flow creates confidence in, and lends credibility to, the notion of free informational choice” (11). A great example of this in laymen’s terms is his reference to the selection of a variety of brands of aspirin at one drugstore. He is adamant that picking which news channel to watch just like when in comes to picking the jar of aspirin to buy, “there is no significant qualitative difference” (10). What you are getting is the same. Basically his argument is sound not only because he has spent much time describing the “five myths that structure media content and manipulate consciousness” but also because his case in the short passage comes closer to proving that the end result of the Mass Media is the “consolidation of the status quo” (11).



James Carey, although his article is more recent and he does have sound evidence when it comes to the ritual and transmission models of communication, it is my belief that his argument is misplaced in this issue. While the question, “Are American Values Shaped by the Mass Media,” has everything to do with communication, the end result does not. Basically what I am trying to say is that by the time the Mass Media has entered our lives in any way, which happens as soon as we become a part of this world, the way we communicate as a society has already been altered. The Transmission Model of Communication developed by Shannon and Weaver is a Linear Model of Communication and success is achieved in this model when the decoded message matches the encoded message. This is basically saying that on the other end of that communication interaction, the messages will match, therefore what I interpret to mean as the Mass Media making a statement that makes sense and is adopted by those in society.

If we look at the Ritual Model of Communication which was created by James Carey in 1989 we will find that it is a Dialogic Model and success is achieved when there has been a creation of a shared sense of community. This too is telling us that even with the ebb and flow of information back and forth, the end result should be Society and the Mass Media in agreement. All in all what I have been talking around the whole time is that yes, without a doubt, the Mass Media does shape American Values.

First Blog

Whoot whoot.