Chapters 14-16

Chapter 14: The Culture of Journalism

Modern journalism is a mix of many mediums as the text book points out. We are now flooded with internet news and T.V news as well as print news publications. This chapter brought up how many unimportant issues are blown way out of proportion and given way to mush attention the news, just look at the Tiger woods media fiasco. Sadly this is what more and more people want to see and learn more about why? are the real issues just too hard to digest?

Chapter 15: Media Effects

This chapter of the text was about how the media affects our culture. It is scary that violence in the media has made effect on our society's aggressive behaviors. There are so many problems with our media portraying drug use, sex, violence, and alcoholism, that it is safe to assume that is why these things are becoming more socaily accepted

Chapter 16: Legal Controls

Ahh yes we do have our freedom of speech don't we? It's most likely the most important right we have. and if we didn't have it i dont think we would be in this class would we? We can make fun of our presidents we can question our government and we should its important to want to know why they are doing things and why they aren't. sadly too many americans just don't care. They don't bother to figure out why we are at war with iraq they just know Bush said it was a good idea and so their with him on it. 

The News About the News part one and two

I really liked this book a lot. I liked the fact that it pointed out that a democracy needs news as a way to keep the government in check because it informs the people. Also this book discuses the problems with the newspapers economical problems and how news rooms and papers are shrinking. This I think is very important because although newspapers are becoming less used due to T.V and internet news and a complete lack of interest on some peoples part, Newspapers are very important because we simply can not get the full substance of a story by just seeing a few video clips and scanning over a shortened article. Sadly some people don't recognize the advantages of getting their news from a newspaper instead getting it from the T.V.

This leads us to why the quality of news has gone down so much. As we stop having to "read" our news it has become more and more flashy, short, sensational, and over all non informative of "real news".  This easy to digest news just makes us stupider as a society. sadly I think News will continue to decline in intellectualism if we don't start to respect it for what is meant to be; a important part of democracy that informs the people of what their elected officials are doing for our country so we as the people can make sure we are being governed fairly.

Chapters 3-7

 Chapters 3-7 Where about how radio, T.V and movies and how they affect and are affected by our society. the authors focused on how these mediums are controlled by certain corporations and how this effects the medium as well as the viewers

While reading these chapters I found it alarming that all our news is coming from only a few sources. when radio started out it was not the way it is now, originally it had many different types of stations with strong restrictions to prevent monopolies and promoted contrast and freedom. Now with staions like Fox News telling us they are giving both sides of the story when in reality they are giving the news a conservative republican slant on everything they report on. one disturbing statistic about television and cable the authors brought up was the one involving the 70% control of broadcasting between 12 different major players in the late 90's to where it is now down to 5 due to loss of regulation laws etc. in the industry.This basically leads to there being less difference of opinions and more bias in T.V and radio. which could lead to less varieties of opinions within society as well.

The other mediums, Film and the recording industries, although largely owned by the same corporate companies as T.V and radio, do at least have more freedom, because of the success of independent films become more popular. as well as in the recording industry it has become easier to put out their music, case in point, radiohead who didn't want to sign with their old label or new one when their contract came up they decided to let their fans pay for their newest album how ever much they wanted. this might not have worked for them if they had not already been super stars but it is a good thing to see in our overly controlled media world we live in.