Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Are We Doomed?

    Aren't we already doomed, hasn't our generation already killed and destroyed good journalism by wanting to look at sexual crap and reading about celebrity's and their lives? WE ARE DOOMED!! We come up with these really unbelievable stories and even the most random-est and stupid story can pass and go on the telly, newspaper, magazine, or especially social media websites.

    We all know the big story that came out a few weeks ago about the actress Angelina Jolie and her preventive double mastectomy she got to lower her chances of getting breast cancer. Admittedly there was buzz about great she is and then stories about Brad Pitt and how he protected and was by her side every step of the way surfaced. More and more stories spinned off from this one story and became more about her boobies then about what a remarkable, and courageous thing she did and to share her story for other women to be inspired and start thinking about breast cancer is a very again courageous thing to do. We make these really significant stories into these twisted unimportant, uninspiring things because we take them to a level where they just don't need to go.

The Most Read Stories in the last 72 hours on People.com



 














    You can even go on social media sites and see the most random-est stuff ever! For  example CNN Breaking News website you would think is a pretty political  and worldly channel/website, right? Well, not so fast you get the one story  of a lifetime; Beyonce get's her booty slapped! Really? This is CNN where  we get world breaking news from and we get stories on Under pressure, Facebook says they'll do more on Hate . That is a real social issue on which  tons of people are trying to stop, hate and bullying on social media websites, but we still get these booty slapping stories because that's the kind of stuff people want to see and watch. Newsrooms are going by the social media sites and the more, and more by the public then by their own investigating and real reporting.

    We're more interested by other's and their lives then our own and what's happening in the world. Since celebs are such an easy target we take their lives and we get interested in them and we write stories on these famous people and since they entertain us and gives us music and films and books we think it's okay to just bash and praise them as we, please. Jay Rosen's Pressthink last year posted something on today's journalism and says, " Journalism will improve when it is made more useful to people." and " The profession of journalism went awry when it began to adopt the View from Nowhere." Maybe those things are true? We seem to get are opinions these days from nowhere and with all this crappy "journalism" people find no reason to watch the news, or tune into the real important facts.

 

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

    When your a little kid your learning what is right and what is wrong. By the time your six or seven years old your becoming an independent adult and you start making your own decisions. When you little though you go be example of your parents and you listen to what they say and observe what they do. You get their own personal opinions on controversial things in the world and for awhile you agree with them because that's the only thing you. Then you grow up and you to school have a few adult conversations and your decisions or stents on these controversial topics changes.

    In journalism we have our own personal definitions of what is right and what is wrong, but when does that get in the way of our decision making process on writing a story, or even printing a story and do they even change our influences around us? I think that your emotions and personal definitions do get in the way of right and wrong decision making. It all comes back to you and how you now take these controversial topics. We all have loyalties to someone or a group of people and you want to respect those loyalties because they're all people, or someone you know personally and you want to back them up. Values are another big thing in this right, or wrong decision making, you have certain values you get from childhood and maybe they change, maybe not. As a human being thought you generally stick to those values since your childhood and those values plus loyalties shape your decision making.

    Now, we get into conflict of interest. Should journalists be allowed to put their personal opinion in their story? I feel that this conflict of interest and right or wrong really go hand in hand because you get your personal opinions from the right or wrong and then sometimes your personal opinion slips into your story that maybe your passionate about. You usually wouldn't do a story that your connected to, but sometimes it happens and I think journalists shouldn't be allowed to put their own personal opinion in their story.

    Let the people have their own stents on the issue at hand, don't push your own opinion on them because your want to, for example legalize gay marriage. I think people get to wrapped in their own opinions when it comes to delicate topics like that and sooner then later people start believing the crap that's out their instead of listening to themselves. It is true that our generation has become to dependent on others and the news for their decision making. People go with the crowds and have others make their own story when they could be making theirs on their own. Reporters can take advantage of this because they can feed their own opinions to these people who have others lead their own opinions and get them to join them in their opinion.
 People avoid their personal morals and have others write them for them, or sometimes people leave their personal morals, values, and loyalties and lead others.

    Give us the people the facts on the situation and from the facts we can start to form our own personal opinion, this is editorial decisions. The question is should reporters give the facts or what people want? I say give us the facts, give us the facts because if you give the people what they want then your only going to get one side of the topic. With one side getting all the attention you're not going to get the others to see the other side, and people will lean more towards the one side of the topic. Needless to say, you have your own values and morals, and loyalties and those things can go in hand with your personal investment with the story and from there you will only be giving one side of a story, not all the sides of the story.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

    Deception is the act of deceiving and to deceive is to be false, so when we say someone is using deception in their story in their investigative reporting they are, or are they? Journalist everywhere has an opinion on this hot topic and it has't to be an old-aged topic among journalists. You’re going undercover and you end up finding really important revealing information and it may bring justice, or it may not. The information may bring the truth to the American people and isn't that what we want anyway? To know the truth behind a situation to know our journalists are being truthful to us and working the hardest to bring us the truth, so we're not blindsided.

    When considering using deception in your story you can get and use multiple guidelines that other journalists have wrote, so you know what to do when using deception. When thinking of it though sometimes you can't get the information you want, or need unless you go undercover. Still you have people who are totally against it and think it's morally wrong, but for a story to be deemed okay deception must be the only thing that he/ or she as a journalist could do. Now there's a new prescriptive in this whole deception thing. So the people who just did deception are really being deceiving and others who did are because they had no other way to find the information out?

  What Would You Do? Is a telly show that broadcasts on ABC network and the show picks hot topics for actors to stage a scenario concerning that hot topic like a lesbian couple in Texas with kids and very verbal waitress. You get reactions from everyday people and then after a while the telly crew and the host John Quinones introduces him and the show etc. Deception? Not deception? How else would they get people’s reactions when people know the telly crew is there in the restaurant? You wouldn't get a southern man to thumbs up the waitress for kicking out a married gay couple and their kids because he doesn't want that televised so his friends maybe co-workers can see, his reputation would be damaged and he wouldn't want that, no one does.

    In newspapers you have to tell the absolute truth, or else it's called unethical journalism, or you were fabricating with information. This makes sense because the newspaper is local and you don't people going around not thinking the truth about someting because then bad things could come of that. The Star Tribune you have people every day here in Minnesota reading it about the news in the Twin Cities and around world at the same time. Then you have more political newspapers like the New York Times where you have a larger number of people reading that paper, but you can also follow both of these on Twitter so you get an even bigger audience. People reading the newspaper are going to be getting information about what's going locally in there city, town, or state and they read big stories that are in the headlines too about politics, for example during election time you always have stories on the candidates, and as a person who is voting you want to know the true specifics behind their plans for the country because your living in this country.

    Deception is a hard thing to absoutly know if it's ok or not to me, you got to think about it for awhile. Does it make sense for one to decieve people because they want raw hardcore investagative reporting? For the telly, are they just trying to make it entertainment for people at home, and trying to get views for the network? To me deception and using it is sketching because if you catch someone in deception they could make an excuse as to why they're using it and say the right thing instead of the ugly truth and sometimes you can hurt people with deception.