Skyler, your response to the classroom discussion on monopolies was thoughtful and it was good thinking to compare it to the board game. However, there was a lot more that could have been said.
For example, you could have given us a better more precise description of what a monopoly is, and given us examples from the real world. One obvious example is one that is happening right now in our own backyard with the purchase of GE by Electrolux (which, by the way, I got wrong on the current events quiz so don't think I am a complete expert). Even though Electrolux is trying to buy GE, it isn't final because the government may think it would create a monopoly. This is because they both make the same things. Like, they both make refrigerators and washing machines.
You also could have spoken about the negative effects of a monopoly and how it gets rid of competition and makes it so the consumers can only buy from that one company. WalMart is a good example of this because they move into small towns and wipe out all the other stores.
Response to CarolinesJourneys: "Toddler ignores military protocol"
I agree with CarolinesJourneys in that this story was not newsworthy, had little local relevance (to Louisville, Kentucky). However, this story does show us what being in the military does to a family., especially a three year old boy, i.e, how cruel military protocol can be. This was the real point of the article. However, CarolinesJourneys does not mention this at all. She seems to have missed the point of the article, which I have to agree, was not explicitly shown. You had to read "through the lines" of the report to see what it was really about.
I also don't agree that it didn't have local relevance. Fort Knox is very close to Louisville and many, many military families live in this region. Just because the little boy and his mom were from San Francisco does not mean that this also doesn't happen to families in Kentucky or all over the U.S.
On the 14th we had a lecture/discussion on conglomeration. I really am interested in this topic. However, learning about it made me realize that media isn't as free as it may seem, and this was difficult for me to digest. For example, if a large company owns two newspapers, i.e., one in Louisville and one in Indianapolis (like Gannett does), they start to look the same and have the same news content and advertisements. As in the case of Gannett, the newspaper also owns dealchicken. So the readers see advertisements for dealchicken, not knowing it is owned all by the same company. See http://www.gannett.com/article/99999999/PRESSRELEASES18/110726001/Gannett-Launches-DealChicken-in-Local-Markets--More-than-50-by-Year-s-End.
Another problem with this is if a reporter wants to write a negative story about a company the owner of the paper may in fact own this company, as is the case with GE, who owns a 49% interest in NBC http://www.cjr.org/resources/?c=ge. Do you really think that NBC would air a story about the toxic wastes that GE dumps into the Hudson River and other waters? I don't think so.
It would have been good if Mr. Miller had mentioned his blog that outlines the conglomeration in the media. I found it by accident on the Internet and it was really helpful to me. In conclusion, I think conglomeration is corrupting the media industry. That is why I am so grateful for independent blogs and other independent news sources.
Before Gutenberg there was stamp seals in Mesopotamia. Then the screw press was invented in Rome, then wood block and clay printing was created in China. All of these worked somewhat, but they were very slow, fragile and inefficient. Then Gutenberg (1450) came along and invented a movable metal type, letter based printing press. This was cheaper, faster, and more efficient.
I thought this lecture/discussion was interesting because we got to learn how, throughout time, inventors kept increasing the efficiency of the printing press. Gutenberg, however, really struck gold with his movable metal type printer. This had a huge impact on the spread of different types Christianity in Medieval Times and exposed the corruption of the Church.
Mr. Miller gave us a lot of information on this subject, including how the printing press impacted politics, religion, exploration, culture, etc. Perhaps it would have been good to see a painting of these inventions and/or a video on how it works. I remember in middle school the teachers showed us a reenactment of a invention made in the 14th Century in Europe. I believe pictures and videos are a great learning tool, especially for visual learners and budding photographers like me, and should be utilized more often.
On Friday September 12th we had a lecture/discussion on magazines. We learned where they originated and how they were originally meant for a general audience (see below). Today magazine companies want to sell to a certain narrow audience, such as sports magazines (who are sold to sports fanatics) and gossip magazines (which are being bought by teenage girls or people who want to be updated on what celebrities are doing), etc. When I think of magazines I either think of gossip magazines, sports magazines or National Geographic.
Having this discussion changed my perspective on the history of magazines. For example, the first magazine was created by Benjamin Franklin in 1741 and it was titled General Magazine. This magazine was for the general audience and included things for each age, gender, interests etc. So I learned about this change of magazine content from general to specific (narrow) audiences.
Throughout the first 250 years of magazine history, many magazines were created. One was The Saturday Evening Post which was created in 1821.
I also learned that Franklin pretty much invented everything around that era. I would have liked to learn what else he invented, especially in the realm of journalism. I think we could have been shown more examples of magazines and how they went from a general audience to a more specific audience. For example, Mr. Miller could have had slides/photos of the old magazines compared to the new ones. We spoke about Norman Rockwell, but where were the photos of Norman Rockwell? I don't exactly remember if Mr. Miller spoke to us about the significance of Rockwell on the American way of thinking (i.e, the "American Dream" or "mainstream" America). But that would have been good.
On the 9/10th we learned about the history of newspapers. Newspapers were first created in Rome in 59 B.C. and was called Acta Diurna. Throughout time it has gone from monthly to weekly to daily. Also, newspapers have traveled from Rome, to Vienna, to Sweden. The Swedish newspaper is the oldest ongoing newspaper. It has been running since 1645. This shows the longevity of this media of news. Its a source that people have been using for centuries.
I thought that the lecture/discussion was interesting because I don't know much about newspapers and didn't know that they have been around for so long (since 1645!). I also thought it was interesting to learn about the different types of newspapers such as the Abolitionist Newspaper of 1831 which was instrumental to rid this country of the curse of slavery. I am a big fan of the history of the Civil War (my family fought for the Confederacy....) and so I am hungry for any information from that era.
My one critique is that I thought we should have spent more time discussing the shift in this era from print media to electronic media. Nowadays, young people do not have the patience to read an entire newspaper. Young people are used to getting ideas in "sound bites," which literally means, "a short extract from a recorded interview, chosen for its pungency or appropriateness." Newspaper stories are just too long and don't include sound or movement, which is what this generation is used to. We just simply have low attention spans.
While newspapers may be low tech, nonlinear, a physical object and portable, I believe that they will eventually die out when the people who have nostalgia for this media are gone.
For example the reporter calls the event an “angry protest.”
With the use of the term "protest," this shows the inability of the reporter to see the people of Ferguson as
individuals, instead treating them as a threatening whole. It seems to me they passively
reiterated this phrase from another source instead of actively pursuing the
facts. There were no real examples or interviews given of the "angry protests," i.e., what did they do for the reporter to describe them as angry? This violates the “enterprise” yardstick because they did
not look deeper into what was actually going on. What the writer could have done is to get different sides to this story. He could have asked the people who participated in the protests to tell him exactly why they were angry, and he could have interviewed witnesses to tell him what the protesters were doing that displayed anger.
This report also violates the “explanation” yardstick because the reporter only said what happened
and not why it happened. For example he could’ve explained about what had happened
with the shooting and after the shooting. The cop shot an unarmed man, not once
but at least six times, including twice in the head. Also Michael Brown’s body
laid in the street after the shooting for four hours in the intense heat and it
was not covered up. With a simple Google search I found all this evidence and I
wasn’t even at the scene. Perhaps if the reporters reported the facts they wouldn’t
have been so quick to judge these “angry protesters.”
The reporter states, “Even though the police shooting of an
unarmed man in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson is only weeks old and a grand
jury is still trying to sort out what really happened, a Washington-based
nonprofit is offering a classroom lesson plan that draws a link between the
incident and the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1960s Black Panther Party.” This
lead in sentence to the article violates the 8th principle “inclusive.” The reporter is minimizing
the event and insinuating that the event is too “young” to be the centerpiece
of a curriculum. I fail to see the evidence as to why the event is too “young.”
The reporter could have explained why he chose to use this term. The reporter is injecting his or her bias, implying the Ferguson events are not yet "ready for prime time," so as that the reader is not left to come to his or her own
conclusion.
Then the reporter goes on to use the term “revolutionary rhetoric of the 1960s
Black Panther Party.” They are comparing the spontaneous upwelling of emotion
from citizens who have clearly endured many years of police harassment and
other racism with an organized group of citizens with a complex history, that
happened 50 years ago in a completely different society, era and context. The reporter is minimizing the value of the event by telling the reader it is
too soon to talk about in our schools, and then blowing up the event by utilizing inflammatory words such as
“revolutionary” and “rhetoric” to describe the Black Panthers. If the reporter
would have used a stock photo he/she could’ve portrayed the other side of what
the Black Panther party really stood for.
Charles Bursey
serving children at Black Panther free breakfast program, Oakland 1968.
The reporter goes on to state that the Governor Jay Nixon of
Missouri called in the National Guard to “restore order.” This violates the 2nd
principle “Loyalty.” The reporter is showing loyalty to the police and stating
that the National Guard was going to “restore order” because the citizens Ferguson
are the ones who are causing trouble, clearly not calling for the ones using
tear gas and other violence to be brought to order. They seem to come to a
biased conclusion that the citizens are the only ones out of order but one
could argue than the police are the ones that need to be brought to order. What the reporter could have done is to give the citizens the same amount of coverage as the police department.
I question what type of “order” the reporter is asking to
restore. There are multiple previous accounts of the police utilizing tactics
of what could only be termed racist and provoking of violence. One example is the Chief of Police of St.
Louis County (home county of Ferguson) directing his officers to go have a “Black
out day.” The chief told his officers to make the jail cells more “colorful.”[2]http://nextnewsnetwork.com/news/lets-have-a-black-day-police-profiling-in-st-louis/. Perhaps
the order they are speaking of is that of police harassment and racial
profiling (more than 86% of all stops and 92% of searches are of African Americans
when they make up 67% of the population)? [3]http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/how-much-racial-profiling-happens-in-ferguson/378606/.
Finally I question whether this journalist was being the
type of watchdog (the 5th principle
of journalism) that was necessary for this type of incident. In particular why
was he not keeping an eye on the police? A picture speaks a thousand words.
A Portrait
of Power in Ferguson, Missouri: A Heavily Armed S.W.A.T. Team is
"Threatened" by an Unarmed Black Man Walking Down the Street in Ferguson, Missouri, August 12th, 2014.
In conclusion the article from Fox News was a very biased
and unfair article. The reporter violated at least four of the nine principles
and seven yardsticks of journalism: Enterprise, explanation, watchdog and
inclusive. After this critique, I will think twice before using Fox News as a
reliable source of news.
1. "Ferguson shooting spurs curriculum advocates to craft lesson on race." FoxNews.com. August 30, 2014.
2. “Let’s have a black day: Police Profiling in St. Louis." NextNewsNetwork.com. July 28, 2013.
3. Madrigal, Alexis C. "How Much Racial Profiling Happens in Ferguson?" TheAtlantic.com.
