Make up Post #1 Network Speech

The speech that was delivered by Jensen at the end of the film is a very powerful and accurate on in my opinion. Jensen listed off a bunch of major companies that in his mind ran the United States. I have to agree with Jensen in the statement of “The world is a business…it has been since the man crawled out of the slime.” I believe that this is true because no matter what you are doing, someone is always trying to make a profit or charge for a service. Since day one of mankind, there would have been some kind of trade for a service. Just like in today’s age we exchange money for everything. Some things cost less, but they are not as good as more expensive items. What Jensen was saying was that it doesn’t matter what anyone says or does because the major corporations run the country. If they want a message put out, they are going to get that message out and there is nothing that can be done about that.

My impression of this speech was that it kind of put Howard in his place by telling him that he is going to be the medium that these corporations use. But they are not using him because of his opinions or thoughts, but solely for the reason that he is live on TV in front of 60 million people. I think this came as kind of a shock to Howard because I think that he felt like his celebrity status would be able to depict his own opinions on he show. But he quickly found out that would not be the case because of the reasons that Jensen discussed in this speech. I agree that all the messages that we hear from TV shows are some how encouraged by one of the major corporations that control the country.

Citizen McCaw Post #2 Make-up post

The television reporter endures insults in order for her to capture Wendy McCaw’s views about certain topics. The reporter put her personal opinions and emotions away in order to gather the most truthful story about McCaw. Her Persistence to gather the proper information that she wanted for her story eventually paid off. This sets up the question “ How does her persistence result in a better story?”

Well because she was able to get McCaw to comment and insult her, she was able to expose the real type of person that McCaw was. Sometimes in interviews, people try and make themself look the best they can to the reporter, even if that is not how they truly behave. This reporter was not going to let that happen, and eventually her hard work and willingness to not give up showed when McCaw exposed her true colors. This makes for a better story because the reporter is doing exactly what she is responsible for. She is suppose to seek and report the truth, and it may have taken a bit longer, but she was able to do so with Wendy McCaw, and then share her story with the public. Because of this reporter’s hard work, the public and readers of the McCaw can now fully understand what type of person Wendy McCaw is towards her publication and why she does what she did with the publication. This also give hopes for the local audience that they can receive journalism from the McCaw that is not skewed or assigned by Wendy for her own personal interests. 

Citizen McCaw

The comment made by Jerry Roberts about journalists being “in the truth business” is very correct. It is a journalist responsibility to seek the truth and report it. No matter what their person agenda is, they must accurately report on all the facts, with no personal opinion. But there is a way that a publisher can make their publication lean towards one way of a situation. In Citizen McCaw, you saw that Wendy McCaw did this by publishing articles about her views on environmental issues. In a different publication, these stories may not have been news, but because they were important to her, she had the final call about placing them in the paper. These views were her opinions, she would only report on the side of the issue that she wanted to because she felt like that was news. This is extremely unethical because it is not covering the stories that are most relevant to the public, only to her interests. With stories like this being assigned to the journalists of the McCaw, it makes it very hard for them to do their job and do it properly. Anyone reading the McCaw is viewing a skewed image of a situation because it is coming from the view point of Wendy McCaw, and only her. This leads to Roberts comments being second guessed by the readers, because if it is a journalists responsibility to report on the truth, then why were the McCaw’s journalists only reporting from the view point of Wendy? All publications should follow Roberts report of being in “the truth business”. It’s the only way that a publication can gain and continue to receive respect from the readers if they accurate seek and report the truth on all situations, not just the ones that the publisher feels is important.

Code of Ethic Review

I decided to pick the case study #1 from chapter 11. This study dealt with the idea of a journalist and photojournalist to stage a family doing household activities like cleaning the dishes, playing basketball, and watching TV. The photojournalist said that he would only shoot the actions that the family was doing when they were there, and not shoot anything that they asked the family to do.

 I think that there is a fine line on when it is okay to stage events. The SPJ code of ethics says to seek and report the truth. In this situation, the family would not be doing their usual household actions because they would be prepared for an interview from the journalist. If the family and journalists have a meeting set up, then they will not be doing what they usually do, therefore it would be impossible to fully report on the truth. I think that because the reporter in this situation is looking to report on their daily lives, that it is okay to ask them to par-take in an action like cleaning the dishes, watching TV or playing basketball. This is the only way that they would be able to get the appropriate footage of the family doing the regular stuff. If they asked them to go out and beg for money, or sensualize the situation, then I believe that would be against the code of ethics. Because it would be making the situation worse than it actually is. 

In my opinion, the reporter was trying to do his job to the best of his ability, without asking the family to do those everyday actions, and then he would not be able to fully report on the situation and get the appropriate footage that he needed.

Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine hand out was extremely graphic. It talked about the event that took place in 1957 when nine African Americans were ruled to go to a white school. At the time, this was a monumental event because the schools had not been segregated yet, and racism was huge. There were hundreds of people lined up at the school, rioting and preventing these students to enter the school. It was so bad that the National Guard was brought in as riot protection. 

We spoke about two different situations that took place. One was about Dr. Benjamin Fine, who was a reporter at the time for the New York Times. He described a situation where there was an African American girl who was being harassed by the rioting mob. Fine, left his duty as a reporter, and helped the little girl get away from the mob. Fine was immediately taken off the story and was brought back home by the NY times because they felt that he had too much of a connection to the story to report on it accurately now. In my opinion, I think that Fine did the right thing. He may have lost the story, but I feel that no matter what the situation is, you have to do your duty as a human being firstly. I understand that times were different back then, and that racism was huge but if Fine didn’t stand up and do the correct thing. That mob could have seriously harmed that girl, maybe even killed her. Fine did the correct thing in my mind; he may not have acted as professionally in some people’s eyes. But he stood up for mankind, and in my point of view that is always the right thing to do, no matter what the situation or consequences are. 

The second story that we talked about was about African American reporter Alex Wilson who was in Little Rock to cover the events. Wilson was part of a group of four African Americans who were the first black reporters on the scene. They were walking up to the mob, where they were confronted. The mob turned violent and went after them because of their skin color. Wilson was a reporter, and was struck with a brick. He later wrote a story about his experiences, and talked about how he decided not to run from the mob. He said, “If he were to be beaten, I’d take it walking if I could—not running.” This was another example of a journalist stepping away from his professional duties to be a human. Because Wilson knew first hand about what the nine students were going through, from his own experiences. He wanted to take a stand for his race. He was making an example that they could stand up to the angry mobs. Because it was not right how they controlled everything because of the color of their skin. The girl in the first story inspired him, he wanted to get the message out to his people that they needed to take a stand and not be afraid of these people. Even though this made Wilson a part of the story, instead covering it, I feel like he did the right thing. It may not have been as monumental as the “Rosa Park’s” event, but it was a step in the right direction. He was doing what was right in his mind, and I applauded him for this. 

There is a fine line between a reporter and their feelings about the story they are covering. They have the profession responsibility to keep their emotions in check and not let them get into the way that they are covering these stories. But in both these cases, I think that the people involved did the right thing. They made an ethical decision in standing up for people and for their race. I believe that they both did the right thing.

Project Implication

I took the age test on Project Implication for our assignment this weekend. I thought this would be a good judgment for me to know where I stand when looking at people and how I associate them with their age. I am getting to the age where I am in-between being “younger” and “older”.

The test required myself to fill out two questionnaires, and take some visual tests. The questionnaires were about basic information of my daily life. The visual tests required me to put a picture into categories “young”, “old”, “good”, and “bad”. When I would see a picture of a persons face or a word, I had to either click the “e” or “I” buttons to distinguish weather I thought that image represented young, old, good, or bad. I thought that this was a very unique way to take a test. But I did think that there are some issues in this system, for myself, I found that a couple times, I just hit the wrong button. The test stressed that we answered these questions as quickly as possible. I found I made a few mistakes, not because of how I felt about that image but because I hit the wrong button. I think this can have a hinder on the results.

My results for the test were that I am “a moderate automatic preference for Young compared to Old.” Before the test I considered my self to fall into this group. So I was impressed that my perception of myself matched up with the data collected for this project.

I think that Project Implication is a very interesting concept for people to see how they perceive various topics about judgment. I think that there are some factors that may cause results to be not as accurate, but it still is a great tool for people who want to know more about themselves.

Veil of Ignorance Blog Post

For this assignment, I will be writing as Chris Hansen, the host of “How to catch a predator.”

 

In today’s society, people should understand that there is no such thing as privacy on the Internet. As being a host for “How to catch a Predator” I have fully come to this realization. Everything that is done on the Internet is being recorded somewhere and can be accessed by someone. For instances, when sending an email, there are at least four places that the email can be accessed: on your account, on the account that you were sending to, the internet provider that you use, as well as the internet provider the receiver is using. That means that with every email you send, four different people could potentially recover it. Because of this reason, I fully believe that there is no sense of privacy when you are on the Internet. What you do on it should be done with the expectation that someone may be able to access it.  In may case, we are fortunate to use that privacy aspect in a way to gather information about people who are breaking the law. I feel like this is a great way to expose the lack of privacy on the Internet.

 

I believe that this type of programming is in fact journalism. We have to spend countless hours investigating into these criminals, as well as doing research to what these predators enjoy. That requires a form of journalism in my eyes. I hear people doubt that and say “it’s a set up. Or it’s a trick.” And to that I have to respond with “If you don’t want to get caught, don’t break the laws and prey on children for sex.”

 

This program falls into the category of “need to know.” These are stories about criminals who are doing a horrible thing. People don’t expect a schoolteacher to be doing these types of things, but it happens. And it’s shocking. I feel that if we don’t expose these events that people will just turn there back to it and act like it never happened. “How to catch a predator” is absolutely a program that is needed to know, so we can start to take the steps to stop these acts.

 

People are attracted to these kinds of shows because it is a potential harm to anyone that has children on the Internet. Everyone can be attacked so it brings a human interest to the show. I feel like people are more into “blood and guts” and this show may not have anything to do with that but it does have to deal with everyday “normal” people that are committing horrible acts to young kids.

 

This program is good for the public. It brings predators of the street. If we were only able to catch one person, I would be happy because that is one less on the streets. This show brings Internet awareness to people who may have never known about these situations. I feel like we are going a good thing. And I will stand and support this show for a long time. 

Network Blog

Sally Quinn’s story on Chris Chubbuck is extremely graphic and tells a story of two different sides. It gives an in-depth look at how professional, successful woman Chris was. As well as giving people a sense of how lonely and depressed she was. It was not apiece for readers to reflect on Chris, but more of a story to try and get to the point about why she killed herself publically.  I found it really interesting that Quinn was able to get in touch with the family and so called friends that Chris had. It provided a great amount of detail as to the type of person she was and how she lived her life.

 

I feel like this article was not an invasion of privacy because the reporter had met with the people that she was quoting. The interviewees all understood that what they were saying was “on the record” and had given consent to it. I think that it was “unethical” for the family and co-workers so speak about her in a degrading way. What Chris did was not acceptable at all, and no matter who wrong that is, in my mind Chris was still a human being, and she should be treated with some kind of respect. Making her look “little” or talking badly about her only causes people to make the assumption that Chris was a bad person. I felt that this story made Chris look like a lonely, desperate crazy person from the relocations of her co-workers. Now, it’s true that Chris had some problems, but the whole world doesn’t have to know that. And I felt that when Chris’s mother said, “We are private people, we do things privately.” Should have been enough for the writer to keep those things private. But, at the same time the reporter was just doing her job, and she felt that she needed to include that side of the story. 

 

I think that Chris’s friends and family agreed to be interviewed because they felt that they need to bring light to story that Chris had some depression problems. That she had seeked help but never fully got it. I think that they wanted the world to understand that this was not an impulse decision, and that it had been planned and that this was what Chris had wanted to do.

 

This story in my mind is a story of being “newsworthy” because it was something that had reached all over the world. This story was timely because it was an event that most of the world had seen. It has value because everyone was talking about it, but it also adds the side to Chris’s idea of how her life was going. People that knew that Chris had killed herself on air, wanted to see more and gather more information about it. That is why this story had value and is considered “newsworthy. The piece also contains a great deal of human interest that plays a big part in the popularity of news.

 

I think that Chris would approve of this story because her job meant a lot to her. She wanted the world to know the facts. And I feel that this story did a good job at that. Giving reasons as to why Chris may have killed her self. And that was what Chris was about when she was alive. 

Blog #7 Commenting on a classmates blog

I decided to look at Brad Cieslewicz’s blog post on the 9/11 photo of the falling person. I thought Brad’s opinion about the reporter doing their job was spot on. He talked about how if he was in the same position, he would have to do the same. The report is there to tell the story to the people who are not there. By posting this picture, the reporter was able to help make the story more interesting and relevant to their audience. I think that Brad did a good job at explaining why he feels the way he does about this scenario, and I agree with his thoughts. 

The TARES test

I chose a different kind of ad for this assignment. I decided to choose a PSA from M.A.D.D (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). I decided to pick this short film because it deals with a problem that is faced across every university in the world. After watching this PSA, I felt very emotional and heart wrenched because the film was able to capture so many emotions without very many words. But that is not the assignment, the assignment was to see if if passed the TARES test. What is the TARES test? The TARES test is a test of ethical persuasion is a test that merges the fields of advertising and public relations by examining behavior through five universal values. The “T” stands for Truthfulness. In my opinion the MADD PSA does pass for truthfulness in the regards that drunk driving is very damaging and harmful not only to the people involved but everyone who is associated with that individual. The “A”authenticity which MADD accomplishes by trying to send the message out that drunk driving is wrong. In this ad, they do not use fear, but more the effects that drunk driving will have on the community. The letter “R” stands for respect, which in my mind the ad had respect for the viewers that the message is intended for. The Letter “E” stands for equality, which is true for this ad because the people conveying the message are faced with these decisions as the people that the message is intended for. They both are on the same playing field and can be affected by drunk driving. The final letter is “S” and it stands for socially responsible and in my mind this ad is because it is a public service announcement about something that has claimed hundreds of people and effected even more than that.

I feel like this ad successfully passes the TARES test because of the magnitude of the message being portrayed as well as how the communicators managed to get the message across. 

 

Brett