Fox Primary: Complicated, contractual

While reading about the four republican candidates who are considering running for president, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee I found it interesting that they all have a contact with Fox News. In my own research fox news is said to be the number one watched news channel and news source in America. At first while reading that the contact that these four candidates have with Fox news that they can only be watched through Fox and no other media channel got me thinking, "Wow, Fox News really knows how to run a news channel." In many ways having information reported about these candidates only through Fox news is wrong because the public who watch other news channels will not be able to get information from these four candidates. On the other hand Fox news is getting great benefits and channel ratings because of its contracts. When I read about C-Span and its editor Steve Scully trying to get an interview with Sarah Palin and how Fox simply refused that idea made me think of Fox as a selfish news channel in some way. In conclusion, I agreed that while having candidates with Fox contracts the GOP will suffer in the general election because these four candidates are avoiding to speak to the other three big news networks.

Can Media Regain Public Trust?

Starting off in issue eight, the author described how time changed so much and came up with new developments in the media such as cable and the internet to the point where journalism isn't always credited beacuse of things like the lack of substantive coverage. Michael Schudson calls the press, "unlovable" because he believes that the press doesn't care sometimes about what they are reporting and that is what causes the public to "unlove" the medias behaviors. I completely agree with Schudson when he pointed out that the "media is focusing on events rather than trends and structures, focuses on conflic right when it happends, shows disrespect towards politics and politicians, and how they alienate the communities." I agree with Schudson because since the media is portrayed like this no one would really "love" these journalists. Schudson mentioned that journalist know how to identify a story and usually what they do is find an "event-centered story" where their adrenalin is pumping, such as an event of a deranged pilot, hurricanes, tragedy, etc. In relation to journalist searching for event-centered stories, conflict was used as a topic by Schudson and how like certain events, it can embarass the powerful. Supporting the idea that the media cannot regain public trust, John Hockenberry brought up an idea that I thought was very interesting and is such a great example of how the public cannot trust the media anymore. The example that Hockenberry used was the idea of "spammers" and how they caught a person who was trying to spam a Dallas housewife through e-mails and had him apologize on camera. Although I agree with this idea of how the media is getting very doubtful to communities because of this "trust" issue, but overall I would have to agree with Schudson that the media can regain public trust. In conclusion, Schudson mentioned that the journalist who he admires are the ones who "get behind and beneath events, eliminate trends, structures, moods and not just conflicts, believe in the virtues and values of pilitical life and hopes it inspires, and feel connected and commited to their communities-global, national, and local." This statement by Schudson persuaded me to believe that although the public cannot always trust the media, there are going to be some "good-hearted" journalist out there that love writing substative and truthful reports. On the other hand there will always be people in the media such as spammers who are making it difficult for the public to trust them, but in the long-run its all up to the public to chose what kind of media they want to engage in; will the read "fake" and "untruthfull" news like The Onion Newspaper, or will the public choose to educate themselves using "truthfull" and "newsworthy" resources, such as C-Span or NPR?

2010 California Governor Election!!!!!

While I was researching the candidates for California Governor online there were many resources and videos that popped up. The main candidates that constatntly came up on every search were Jerry Brown, who is part of the Democratic Party and Meg Whitman, whos is part of the Republican party. Before this I honestly never knew anything about the candidates before this research and because I don't have a television in my room, the main mass media resource I use for information is the internet. After researching a little on who the important candidates for Governor is I went in dept and researched their own websites which are, jerrybrown.org and megwhitman.com. I found it very useful that when I was researching all six candidates i the beginning it was very common that they all had their own website and I found that very interesting because about ten years ago it probably would've been different and it showed me how fast technology can create great resources for the public. Anyways while I was educating myself on the two main candidates, I found Jerry Brown to be the favorite of California because Brown was the California Attorney General, Oakland Mayor, ex-governor, ex-secretary of state, and ex-democratic chair. Jerry Brown has been in politics for over forty years which shows me that he has the experience to be a great governor. Other things that I learned about Brown was that he supports the global warming agenda, he is a gun advocate, opposed marijuana legalization and supports same sex marriage. On the other end I found Meg Whitman to be least supported by the people because of her past mistakes. What I learned about Whitman is that she was the CEO of Ebay, she supports major corporate expansions, opposes Arizona immagiration law, opposes marijuana legalization (something both candidates have in common), and is tied to global corporate structure.While I was researching online looking through newspapers I found that in the primary election Jerry Brown had 2.021,189 votes and Meg Whitman had 1,529,534 votes. What I found interesting was that many of the articles that are writing about Meg Whitman are giving a negative vibe because of her pas issue with spending millins of dollars. Besides learning about the candidates, I found it very easy to use the internet, whihc included Google, Wikipedia, youtube, newspapers online, the candidates websites, etc. But on the other hand what I found twice is that some websites did not have updated information which confused me because that is how misleading the media can be online. Therefore, I found it easy to stick to traditional ways and use the newspaper as my best resource on the California Governor race because it is updated everyday so you know you are not reading old news and is accessible online. Lastly, I also found it very disturbing that there are many people who are very strong supporters of one candidate and they create videos and write articles about how the candidate is not only a very bad candidate for Governor, but how he/she is a very bad persona and doesn't know how to dress. On youtube and huffingpost.com I found many videos with negative information about the candidates and found it interesting to see that many people already watched them and the comments they wrote seemed like a social debate online where there are many people leaving their own opinion on them and others opposing their opinion. I just found it very interesting that videos such as these are creating issues between random people around the world.

Will evolving forms of journalism be an improvement?

Issue ten in the book “Taking sides” starts off by mentioning forms of participatory journalism such as the “explosion of voices,” described as independent news reporting and commentary from members all over the world through technologies such as web sites, blogs, digital newsletters, YouTube videos, etc. The purpose of having this kind of participatory journalism is so individuals can report and comment on news using their own opinion, whether they are positive or negative comments. In relation to participatory journalism is the idea of “networked journalism” where everyone shares facts, questions, answers, ideas, and perspectives in order to get the real story. This certainly shows that forms of journalism are evolving, where professionals and amateurs can put their ideas together through new advances in technology, but it doesn’t mean that it will improve our society. To support my opinion, Eran Ben-Porath in his article “Internal Fragmentation if the News: Television News in Dialogical Format and it consequences for journalism” brings up the idea of how the mass media is using a dialogic format versus the traditional practices. The idea is that the media who is supposed to be improving journalism is using conversations (the dialogical format) rather than reporting (the traditional practices) and is coming up with opinionated news rather than actual facts. In conclusion, will evolving forms of journalism be an improvement? For now I say no, because like Ben-Porath said, “Question asking is becoming the norm rather than fact checking,” and in my opinion, until the media can find the traditional practices of journalism, improvement in the evolving forms of journalism is what is still needed.

Does fake news mislead the public?

I have no doubt about it that fake news misleads the public. I watched videos and read articles from The Onion, which is an entertainment newspaper that also has a website featuring satirical articles and videos writing about local, national, and international news. The Onion only has only one section in the newspaper which is described as a separate independent section called The A.V. Club. The A.V. Club is described as “non-satirical entertainment,” and reports on interviews and reviews on many new released media and weekly features. I read an article the other day that was a perfect example of why The Onion reports such satirical news. The article was called, “Easy wife gives it up on first date night.” Obviously from the title you could interpret the main idea of this article and how useless this type of news is being printed and shared across the world as “News.” Another disturbing article that I read and considered fake news was titled, “Second-Most Popular Kid in School Assumes Power Following Death of Star Quarterback.” I found this article very disturbing because despite the idea that the article was fake, it included the idea that because the star quarterback died unexpectedly, the next popular kid in line is in power of the high school now. The article also included fake names, fake photos, and a fake high school. Fake news reports like this shows that the public is being mislead by stories that aren’t true and basically written for their entertainment. The last example that I am going to use is a video clip of a story by The Onion which was entitled, “Obama releases 500,00 Men From U.S. Strategic Bachelor Reserve.” The main focus of this news report is that Obama is releasing 500,000 single men around the continental U.S. in order to satisfy the needs of women. This news report seemed real to me while I was watching it because they had President Obama on camera and speaking on behalf of this idea, but it is very fake news. In my opinion, newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle would not find any of the top reports from The Onion newsworthy and relevant to society. Therefore, I truly believe that because of the change of some media that went from substantial coverage straight to humor and entertainment, fake news is now misleading the public because they are either unaware of the reality or the media is either finding a way to manipulate ideas into the public and having them think for a second, “Is this news really true…….”