News Media Critique

In a poston NPR's website, they discuss the Syrian refugee crisis, the article discusses the views of the UN on the Syrian crises and how the refugees are dealing with what they are given. The article interviews the UNHCR chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, and the article interviews Abeer Etefa, who is with the U.N.’s World Food Program and lastly the article interviews Nancy Lindborg, who is the president of the U.S. Institute of Peace. This article is full of sources on the matter, all of which affect the story and what is happening, they still have not covered all seven yardsticks, NPR is missing, the final yardstick, fairness, the story has a lot of evidence from many points of views of the story, but they decided not to include a section or interview or quote, of a Syrian refuge.

The story is written very well and displays many of the yardsticks, but fairness is a key yardstick where NPR missed the mark.  No matter how strong the argument is, fairness is a key point to help the audience understand and internalize the news. It helps show both sides of an argument, and when dealing with a story such as the Syrian refuge story, it is important to have an example or firsthand experience so everyone understands the article and the point of why the journalist wrote it. All the three people who were interviewed, all have jobs, all have houses, and all have not been a refugee in Syria during this time. 

There are a lot of people all over the world who are interested and want to help the refugees but if no one can read about the truth of what they are going through and there is no fairness to the story, then the journalists are truly not doing their job to inform the public.

People depend on journalists and journalism to stay correctly updated on the news and as soon as journalists stop doing that, the field as a whole will collapse. In this NPR post, most of the information is there, and all of the information that is there is good information from good sources, but the article doesn't show fairness because of the lack of the other side of the story. 

Response to Newspaper Lecture (Ali Shackelford)

I really liked Ali's blog post because she went through the history of the newspaper and how it has evolved, which is a good thing to do to help your reader understand what the article is about. I also liked how Ali talked about everything that was discussed in class, not just one aspect of the lecture. I agree with when she discussed how newspapers used to be used to not only inform the people, but give the people what they wanted. If during the Civil War, you lived in the North, you wouldn't want to read about a great win for the South, you would want to hear about how the North slayed the South in a fabulous victory. So the newspapers, although mostly truthful and unbiased, they were also somewhat biased about battles because that's what the people wanted to hear, they became infotainment newspapers to please the people. I also think that Ali was right about how the newspaper is always evolving and always changing to try and sell more copies, but nowadays the articles are online as well as on paper to increase the amount of people, but who knows what could happen, maybe someday the newspaper will be completely online and they won't even sell paper copies. 

John Peter Zenger Case- Paved the Way for Journalists

When we first heard about the John Peter Zenger case, I was intrigued; I mean the guy got put into jail for telling the truth about someone in power, then was let out of prison because truth is the ultimate defense. I think that this is an important lesson to learn about, to teach about, and to discuss. I think that it is an important lesson to learn about in a Journalism 1 class because all Zenger did was tell the truth and he was thrown into jail, but the jury realized that telling the truth was his entitlement as a journalist, and telling the truth about people in power is something all journalists need to know how to do. I think that we should be taught about this event because it was one point in time that lead up to the First Amendment mentioning freedom of the press, which is something that is key to journalists and in history. I think that it is a great thing to discuss also because it is important to think about the different views on a subject, like a journalist’s view and a politician's views should be different, but the journalist should publish both points of views which is what John Peter Zenger did, but the politician had the power to throw him in jail for telling the truth. But I did enjoy the lecture and thought that it was a very interesting topic to cover. 

Response to Demassification (Maggie Mitchel)

I really enjoyed Maggie’s post on demassification. I completely agree with what she is saying for many different reasons. 1. I too think that it is a great idea to select a niche that you want to sell to, that way instead of putting something in there for everyone, your audience and your ads would be selective to the target audience. 2. Because there are so many people in the world, if a magazine, or any form a media, was made for everyone, it wouldn't be very popular. For example, me and my grandma are close, I see her almost every single weekend. But when I think of her magazines (mostly quilting) and I think of my interests. They don't match. As Maggie said "Everybody is so diverse in their interests and hobbies, so how could one media appeal to everybody?" I complexly agree with that statement, with demassification, media can be unique, just like the people who read them. 

However I disagree with Maggie's last claim. She states "Maybe magazines are going to continue to get more and more specific, until there will be a magazine for each more and more specific niche group." While I do agree that media, and magazines will continue to get into smaller niches I do not think that they will ever go into tiny niches, or even become very specific, this is mostly because the magazine and newspaper marketing area have become smaller and smaller so I don't think that the companies will have enough time for them to shrink niche sizes. 

The Printing Press- Education is Power

I think that the printing press was a key factor in today's daily life. Before the printing press, much of the population around the world was illiterate. This made taking money from the people and giving it to the church and the king, extremely easy. People thought that by paying the Pope and the church they would be accepted into heaven because they couldn’t read the Bible, or get their hands on a Bible to check if they were supposed to be giving money to the Pope or not. Now, the printing press changed all of that. Now only about 12% of the whole worldwide population is illiterate, which is a great jump.

I think that the printing press was a great thing for humankind because it helped people all over the world obtain an education, which is a basic human right. I think that education is a human right because education is power, whenever there was a dictatorship in history the first thing the dictator did was take away the people’s books and schools and they usually killed all the professors. Because if you can control the past (what people think happened in the past), then you can control the present (what people learn now), which in turn helps you control the future (what people do with their education).

I think that the people in the medieval times are a good example of this because they couldn’t read so they didn’t know that when the Pope told them that to get into heaven they needed to pay, he was lying to benefit himself and the King. But when Gutenberg created the printing press it changed the system and the way people thought because the Bible was now in their language and cheaper than before. This caused the people to realize that the Pope and king had been tricking them and it created the formation of new branches of Christianity. This shows that as soon as the Pope and King lost control of the education of the people, they lost power. 

Binary Models- Information & Entertainment

Information and Entertainment are one of the four binary models. The four are

1. Hot and Cold

2. Elitist and Populist 

3. Information and Entertainment

4. Content and Distribution 

I'm going to talk about Information and Entertainment. Information and Entertainment is a collapsing binary model. This is because the companies who are informative, this means that they are made and supported to inform the public on a certain matter, usually change by adding a little bit of entertainment to the broadcast because they aren’t getting enough supporters or want more people to support the broadcast. When an information company blends to add a touch of entertainment, it is called “infotainment.” Although the broadcast isn’t informative completely, I think that this model becoming a collapsing model is good. I think this because if they need to add a touch of entertainment to a news show to get more people to watch the news, then I say go for it, because although the story is not as educational as before, if people are actually watching then what is the harm in adding a little bit of entertainment to get the audience informed.  

Conglomeration- Good or Bad?

Whenever I think of conglomeration, I now think of Disney, the company that bought out ABC Family and Marvel Studios. Disney wasn't always a huge company that runs a lot of the TV world; it grew to be that size, through hard work. When we were in Mr. Miller's class, I thought conglomeration sounded crazy, it’s like one company buying out all the competition they have so they can rule the playing field. But as I continued to think about it, I concluded that it wasn’t a terrible idea. If you’re into the Hunger Games and Harry Potter, because one company owning the movie business, means a lot of sequels and continuations and remakes of the same movie, plus lots of merchandise. Conglomeration also helps the giant companies, it helps them have an increase in efficiency and conglomeration helps Disney and companies like Disney to have a lot of purchasing power. However, conglomeration stops different point of views from being displayed and different types of movies being made because there are 7 big companies that own a lot of the movie business. Although there are flaws in the conglomeration system, I still think that it is a pretty good idea.