No such thing as Unbiased

Is it the job of a journalist to rake up all the nitty-gritty details to place someone in a certain light? Or is it their job to tell the simple truth?  In my opinion, there is no such thing as complete unbias.  Every single person on this planet has grown up with different circumstances, different experiences that shape their opinions and perspectives.  It is impossible to state a real “bird’s eye view” of a situation, no matter how controversial it may be.  On that note, journalism is an essential building block of society, without it we would not progress or evolve.  Like the group said, “Journalists hold a mirror up to society,” forcing citizens to look at one another and question if everything is morally straight.  Below is a link to a YouTube video called “Pakistani Truth News” I just thought the title was a bit ironic… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9NrFNggpd0

            I really liked how the presenting group brought the class into the discussion by asking questions to the class as a whole, and giving an incentive (Dove chocolates).  http://www.dovechocolate.com/  It was a clever and fun perspective of their project that added to their already well-researched and presented topic. 

            Below is a link to an article questioning whether or not journalists are really digging deep to find the truth in the world today.  I found it to be quite interesting and made me do a mental double-take in questioning the intentions of our journalists today. 
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/101937/Where-Are-Muckraking-Journalists-Today.aspx

News in the Future

I really enjoyed this past week's presentation on the future of news.  I especially liked how they used Prezi for their presentation, as it flowed really well and was visually pleasing.  Here is a link to Prezi: http://prezi.com/ for anyone that doesn't know what Prezi is, or how to create a Prezi presentation.

Everything is shifting to the web, even television and newspapers, and people are becoming skeptic about the existence of newspapers in the future, wondering if they will exist at all. I liked how the group presented a different aspect of this.  They explained how changes in demographics and general lifestyle and family habits are evolving, requiring a high demand for quick information.  News and journalists must start switching to internet connections in order to keep up with the world and the fast-paced mindset of society.  This is not necessarily a bad thing since news and its mediums have always been evolving.  It is just a continuation of the uphill evolution of media. I decided to research some more statistics of the current internet usage in America and also found some information on cell-phone service and text message numbers. I have included an article with some of those statistics.  Here's a link: http://mobithinking.com/mobile

I believe that the media and news stations will survive, as long as they strive to stay in connection with the world and the newest technology.  Without journalists, the world will become even more corrupt as we will have no one to bring us reliable information.

Converting to Comms 239

This blog is now going to be used for my Comms 239 class.  The name, “It’s all just a big time bomb” still fits because it applies to journalism in a sense that there is only so much time before a story is reported, and the information is out for the public to feast on.  If journalists aren’t responsible in getting the correct and factual information out, some one else will, and they won’t care whether or not it is the truth. 

            In reflection to last weeks’ class and the group presentation (September 6^th), I really liked how the group presented their chapter and gave the class a handout, which outlined the material.  I really appreciated that and used to it to take notes on!  One thing I would have suggested about their presentation was to more evenly divide the information that was presented between the group members.  It seemed that some of the members had bigger topics in comparison with other group members.  Other than that though, it was a well-presented topic with clear information.  For my link I decided to look up Walter Lippman since he was part of the chapter and I did not write down any information about him or his influence on journalism.  Below is a link to a biography I read about Lippman and his political/journalistic experiences. 

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlippmann.htm