Response to Sterling's Media Critique

          On his blog, Sterling wrote a media critique that I thought was well done. He was complimentary rather than critical of the article and its journalist at times, but the points made when he was being critical were very well made. His article was about the boy, Ahmed, who was arrested because everyone thought that his homemade clock was a bomb. Sterling said that while the story was newsworthy, this specific take on it didn't include all of the sides of the story. This is a very good point. I've seen more than one article on this topic and few include any quotes or information from Ahmed himself about his take on the situation. This type of journalism violates the fairness yardstick, and it's something that should definitely be corrected and avoided in the future. Sterling's media critique can be found here.

Movies vs. Television- class response

          When we talked about movies in class, my mind immediately went to a movie that I once saw. I'm sure some people have seen it. It was one of the American Girl movies, Molly. The movie is set during World War II. The reason that I was reminded of this movie is that there's a scene where Molly and one of her friends go to a movie theater after school. The scene is shot from in front and a little bit above the girls as they're watching, and it really does a great job of capturing the immersive experience. The girls' faces are fully illuminated by the screen and they have expressions of awe. It did a great job of showing this thing about movie theaters that television will never really be able to do. The huge screen, the sound coming from both sides, and the darkened room are all features that set theaters apart. 

          In the same movie, right after the girls leave the theater, they go to an ice cream parlor. There are a few things about this scene that stand out as well. One is that the place is absolutely packed to the brim when they get there. Another is that they know the server by name and he know their exact orders. Lastly, it stood out to me that the girls did not simply go home. All of these aspects of the movie scene portrayed how the growth in the popularity of television made us more lazy, and less social. Everyone in the ice cream parlor was there with friends because there wasn't really much else to do. Back then, you did things with your friends outside of the house, because anything else was boring. Television has changed us in that we are willing to sit at home for hours watching shows and programs that barely interest us. This trait was not at all present in the characters of the movie that I've been using as an example.

Class response- Television

          When you watch old movies and TV shows set in the past, you notice that everyone is dressed so nicely at almost all times. They're always going out, they hang out at drug store food counters and ice cream parlors. They seem to annunciation more clearly and use a better vocabulary. Nowadays, this is certainly not the case, and television is a big part of the reason why. In class, we learned that TV made us all more lazy, which would explain why the social part of the description of the past is true. It was also said that TV was instrumental in trend setting. This explains the change in wardrobe and speech. That being said, the piece that really got my attention, was the bit about how TV alters our sense of reality. Because while this means that it changed our ideas about what was and wasn't acceptable in society, it also means that this look at the last that we have might not be accurate. The scenes that I described at the beginning of this paragraph really glorify life in the early and mid 1900's. But, I think it's interesting, albeit slightly confusing, to think about the fact that if TV alters our sense of reality, those times might not have actually been quite as glamorous as they seem on the screen.

Class response- censorship

          During our class discussions about movies and TV, we talked about censorship. When movies were a new thing, censorship was at its toughest. Things that couldnt be shown included sex, drugs, and violence, but the thing that interested me were all the loopholes. Mr. Miller told us about how they would show everything they could that was implicative of sex, drugs, or violence, without actually showing it. My mind immediately went to the old movie "Little Shop of Horrors." In that movie, there is an abusive relationship. However, any time any violence is shown, it is shown through windows with the curtains drawn so that you can only see silhouettes of what's happening. There is also an ax murder near the end of the movie, but the only thing they ever show is the shadow of the ax. I had always thought that these features were just outdated, cheesy techniques used in old movies as a way to add drama or suspense. It never occurred to me that there was any legal reason behind these choices. I found it very interesting to finally learn where all of these old practices in film came from.

Media critique- WAVE

          When I was looking over the headlines in the news logs, I noticed something interesting between WAVE's stories. On the log for October seventh, their online headline read "Another summer-like day." Now, that alone is clearly unnewsworthy, but it happened again. On the log for October nineteenth, their online headline read, "Another frosty night." These stories are very similar, and very unimportant. Newsworthiness is outlined in both the yardsticks and the elements, and these stories violate it. Weather stories are very rarely newsworthy because the weather is constantly changing, so it is difficult for something relating to weather to affect a lot of people for a lot of time. Mr. Miller even told us to ignore the weather block of the news shows and the weather section of the newspaper. It's not a priority to tell people that the temperature was low when it just rose again in the morning. It's also not important to tell everyone that there was a warm day, because now it's cold again. No one was affected for any time by these two events.

         WAVE has also had other headlines that weren't newsworthy such as "Man Shot and Killed Identified" and "Two Semis Slam Into Overpass." Accidents like this are tragic, the families are certainly affected, but no one more than the victims and their families are influenced. They are not worth reporting on. If anything, I think that it's disrespectful to deny the victims and their families privacy. 

Media Critique- WDRB

          I was thumbing through the news logs that we completed in class, and WDRB's numbers stood out to me. In the bottom section of categorization, they consistently had a very low number of of stories categorized under the "politics, government" section. This violates the "watchdog" element of journalism. They're not keeping a close enough watch on people in Washington, people with power. I would have, if nothing else, expected to see more of Donald trump in the news, but there aren't many stories. With the presidential race and all of the debates between the republicans, they should have plenty of things under that category to report on. I'm listening to a republican debate as I write this, and yet there is so little information provided by WDRB about what's going on right now in terms of politics.
          Along with having a shockingly low number of government and politics based stories, WDRB consistently releases many stories under the "social issues, human interest, education" category. This violates the "inclusive" element of journalism. The inclusive element of journalism states, among other things, that the news should be kept comprehensive and proportional. The ratio of human interest stories to politics stories is entirely disproportional, and the arguably more important category is getting the shorter end of the stick. With the presidential race going on and elections quickly approaching, it is important to know what candidates have been doing and saying, but there are far more stories based around social issues.

Response to Mattie's Blog "datsomattie"

          Mattie wrote a media critique on her blog datsomattie. This post stuck out to me in particular because she said some things that I found to be very relatable. Along with telling about the disproportional amount of crime stories, she mentioned that if she wasn't in a journalism class, she likely would have considered it all to be news. Before taking a journalism class, I would have, to an extent, assumed that if something was in the news, it must be newsworthy. Her post made me realize that this class has given me the important resources to differentiate between things that are important, and things that are simply interesting. 

          The post went on to criticize the news outlet for releasing continuations to the already unimportant story. I agree that this is something outrageous that is quite often seen. I've definitely seen examples of a news outlet posting multiple follow ups on things that never mattered in the first place. Any companies or journalists guilty of this should try to stop and report on things that actually matter such as the presidential race that we have seen so little of. 

Response to Eli's Blog

          I thought that Eli wrote an excellent media critique that you can read yourself by clicking here. The critique opened with an interesting example that everyone would agree is not newsworthy. The story mentioned in the critique was laughable, and i think that nearly everyone would agree with her points about why it wasn't newsorthy. Eli explained why this story violated the yardsticks and elements of journalism, but she also went into depth about other times that the same news outlet had failed to produce good journalism. She talked about past patterns and she gave examples. Her reasoning was well explained. One thing that I found particularly interesting was the fact that after she had critiqued the media, she gave suggestions for how they could fix their weaknesses. For example, she suggested that the journalist review the article several times and that the specific, unnewsworthy, story be removed entirely from the front page to make from for more important information. This is something that I think I will try to incorporate more into my own entries.