Blog #10: Response to "The News about the News: American Journliasm in Peril"

I agree with Leonard and Robert many people turn to the news when its significant or major. From the beginning, news have connected citizens to the shared events that affected their lives. News outlets have evolved over time dating back to the Civil War to presidential elections.Journalism has evolved dramatically through centuries thanks to famous journalists such as Tom Paine, Ben Franklin, Ida Tarbell and etc. Through their work they won the support of the people. The country has always give a special status to journalism. Nine of the original thirteen states  added the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law..abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Over the years, the media and the government officials went back and forth repeatedly talking about this and how far the press could go in challenging the politically powerful. The american newspaper made it a regular practice to print not just political news, by foreign and domestic and for the first time, it printed reports from the police, from the courts, from the streets, and from private household. Journalism was gaining steam and it was catching everybody's attention.

Blog #9: Response to Chapter 13, "Watergate forces President to his knees"

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein changed journalism entirely. There nonstop investigation found "solid evidence" connecting the White House to "The third-rate burglary." the break-in led to revelations about the misuse of campaign contributions, laundered money, political sabotage, deception, immortality, and other misdeeds. It led Nixon becoming the only U.S. president in history to resign from office. Woodward and Bernstein pushed the limits of investigative reporting, they lied, begged and badgered sources. Woodward relied on an anonymous source the whole time, Deep Throat. The newspaper they worked for The Washington Post was the only news organization investigating the Watergate story. Television news did a bad job covering Watergate unlike the Civil Rights Movement and The Vietnam war. It made The Washington Post famous.    

Blog #8: Response to the movie "Good Night and Good Luck"

Through the movie, "Good Night and Good Luck" I learned more things about Edward R Murrow then before. In the movie, it portrays the conflict between veteran radio television journalist Edward R Murrow and U.S. Senator Joesph McCarthy of Wisconsin especially relating to the anti-communist senator's actions with the senate permanent subcommittee. Edward R Murrow, See it Now and Person to Person show on CBS attracted a lot of people to watch it. See it Now was a TV news magazine and Person to Person was a celebrity interview show. Through Murrow's show journalism expanded through radio and television. It gave a reason for people to tune in to his shows. Edward R Murrow had a big impact on media journalism

Blog #7: Response to the handout: "The Rise and Fall of Edward R. Murrow"

What propelled Murrow's career was his program on beleaguered Air Force Lt. Milo Radulovich and his later, more famous attack on McCarthy in 1954 enhanced the credibility of See It Now and its views. Many people praised how Murrow balanced his own stardom with his instincts for hard-hitting journalism. Murrow left a huge impact on media journalism and left an impact on television through CBS.

Blog #6: Response to handout "Code of Ethics"

I agree with the Members of the Society of Professional Journalists to adopt the code and declare it as a standard practice because now in days journalists are willing to do anything to be on the front page. They tend to forget the principles of being a journalists and rely on uncrediable sources. The Code of Ethics consist of four parts. The first one is to seek the truth and report it; journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Second one is minimize harm; ethical journalists treat sources, subjects, and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect. Third one is to act indepently; journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know. The last one is be accountable; journalists are accountable to their readers, viewers and each other. Journalists should try maintaining these standards throughout their career and this what separates good journalists to bad journalists.

Blog #5: Response to Chapter 6, "Muckraking"

The Muckrakers played a huge role in our history if it weren't for them society would still be denoted by robber barons and corrupt politicians. These reporters provoked political, industrial, and social change by describing the horrid details to create a new style of magazine writing. Consequently the rise of the magazine was instrumental in the success of muckraking. Muckraking was called "The Literature of Protest." The first Muckraker was in 1902 name Lincoln Staffers, he began writing journals. He wrote articles exposing the "illegal and unscrupulous practices" among state government officials. He went through public records and interviewing city officials. Another famous Muckraker was Ida Tarbell known as the queen of the Muckrakers. In 1906, congress passed the Hepburn Act, "which made the penalties for preferential arrangements by railroads so severe that the practice quickly ceased." Muckrakers were an important part of history.

Blog #4: Chapter 4 Response, "Journalism of Vertification"

In the 1920s, Walter Lippman said that journalists should focus on "evidence and vertification." He's refering to how journalists should mainly focus on the evidence and verify it to maintain credibility. Some of his principles of reporting was to never add anything was not there, never decline the audience, be transparent as possible about your methods and motives and rely on your reporting. I agree with him because now in days many journalists write/report about random things and aren't reliable because of where they got the sources from. They don't validate their evidence. This could lead to bad journliasm for the public by misinforming them with false information. These journalists rely on misleading sources instead of creditable ones. According to Walter Lippman, "In journalism, only by explaining what we know can we approximate, the idea of people being able, if they were of mind, to replicate the reporting. This is what is meant by the objectivity of method in science and in journalism." Articles written by these journalists don't explain much on their reporting and don't elablorate much on it.

Blog #3: Feature News Story and Hard News Story Compare and Contrast and Response of Chapter 2 (Abolition)

   
(Chapter 2)

After reading this chapter I realized how much Freedom of the Press and Abolition go hand to hand. Through journalism many editors has changed history. Elijah P. Lovejoy established his own newspaper in his state of Missouri called the St.Louis Observer and Alton Obersver. According to Lovejoy, " Just as Tom Paine had appealed to the human emotions to translate colonial opposition to the British into terms the average man and women could relate to, abolitionist editors used highly charged rhetoric to place the slavery debate on a plane that made sense to a critical mass of the American public." People were soon reading the newspaper more and transformed the most controversial issue into a bigger issue. With more and more readers there were more editors writing about slavery particularly William Lloyd Garrison. He bean publishing in Boston of 1831 "What emerged as the archetype of advocacy journalism in American History,The Liberator. He constantly debated pro slavery editors and with his voice against slavery more and more mainstream newspaper also joined in the crusade. It only started with 2,500 subscribers but then grew to a circulation of about 200,000. There were many other abolionists that soon follow. Through journalism it has convinced the opinion of many on slavery and through it The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by the constitution, abolishing slavery.

TBC..

Blog #2: Feature News Story Vs Hard News Story

22 children at the Sint-Lambertus School in Heverlee, Belgium along with six adults died where a bus crashed into the wall of a tunnel in Southern Switzerland. The children were on it's way back from a annual ski trip for the last year of elementary school. According to Ms, Emmers, who was volunteering at a community center, "The kids save up the money all by themselves for their last year, selling things, running bingo sessions and so on." It was a sad day.It's a featured news story because the writer added his opinion into the beginning of the article in order to catch the reader's attention. Not everyone would say that the children at the Stekske Elementary school would dream from first grade on about the annual ski trip to the Alps.

Worker who hid lottery win must share 38.5 million prize with five other co-workers.They all worked together for this highway construction company. The friends from New Jersey has pooled their money for lottery tickets for years. Five of them relied on a member of their group, Americo Lopez to buy the tickets. In November 2009, he bought a mega million ticket with that money and told no one but lottery officials. He quit his job after and told his friends that he needed foot surgery and they believed him. Several months later he told another man in a group that he won and the news spread on to the other members of the group. A jury in Union Country ordered Mr.Lopes to share the winnings with the five former co-workers. It's a hard news story because it emphasis on ancedotes, telling stories and describing episodes in Mr. Lopes life. It also has the most important information on top, characterized by the five W's, who, what, where, when and why. It's organized Ina different way to, you have more information tied together rather than a descending linear development of information.

Blog #1: Chapter 1 Response,"What is Journalism for?"

        The most surprising things I read was that only 42% of Americans read a daily newspaper the day before and only 3 out of 10 Americans can even name their congressmen over the last thirty years. I actually thought it would be less considering the current generation of Americans read less. They tend to other things instead. I agree with Lippman, one of the nation's most famous journalists that people know the world indirectly and perceive how the media portrays it to be. As Lippman said, "Citizens are like theatergoers who arrive in the middle of the third act and leave before the last curtain, staying just long enough to decide who is the hero and who is the villain. People aren't looking at the whole picture they just look at the problems and not the solution and the media has played a part in that. According to historian Mitchell Stephens, "People crave news out of basic instinct-what we call the Awareness Instinct. They need to know what is going on over the next hill, to be aware of events beyond their direct experience. Knowledge of the unknown gives them security; it allows them to plan and negotiate their lives." I agree with him, this is one of the main reasons why I would watch the news in the morning and at night. We need news to live our lives. to protect ourselves, bond with each other, and identify friends and enemies.

       When I first heard about this on the news that a U.S. marine killed 16 Afghan villagers, 9 of those being children I was stunned. At first I thought that the villagers did something but that wasn't the case. According to military officials he left his small combat outpost in Panjwai district early in the morning last Sunday, walked into two nearby villages and shot or stab 16 people. He has been deployed four times and had a exemplary record. He's been injured twice once one being on his head with traumatic brain injury and another incident where he lost part of his foot. Pentagon officials believes that it's a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues that made him snapped. He's also a father of two. This creates more tension between the United States and Afghanistan where peace talks have stalled between both presidents. I hope they get to the bottom of this and find out what truly went wrong otherwise it could get nasty real soon.