Group 3 Presentation

The presentation given by group three definitely got me thinking. While doing the reading I was, frankly, quite bored and uninterested in the subject of journalism around the world. But the questions asked and the scenarios proposed really provoked a response out of me. So here are my thoughts.

Will every country end up with the liberal model of journalism? I really hope not! The book claims that more and more other countries' journalism style is becoming more like that in america. That may be true but it is upsetting! When the presentation first started I put up a twitter that said "I'm glad we had the liberal model" but by the end of the presentation I was thinking how stupid that was! Here are some of my reasons:

In the United States we are starting to see a lot more political parallelism. For example the very clear distinctions we can see between fox and msnbc. The latter is obviously very liberal based and it is even more clear how conservative fox is! For those of us who really believe in the liberal model this could be very upsetting. But to me is encouraging! It encourages me to do a little more searching than just accept that of one source. It also encourages me to really find my own opinions by comparing those of people with obviously opposing views. Further more, its just fun to hear the extreme political commentators rant and rave about their convictions and accuse and poke at those on the other networks.

Another reason the I don't believe in the liberal model as the best thing is the dispute about what truth exactly is. Group three pointed out that News and Truth are not necessarily the same thing. One of my favorite things said in the presentation was the mere accuracy can be a kind of distortion to the truth. Besides that, no one is going to write something with absolute mere accuracy. Every journalist is a human and all humans have their own beliefs, agendas, and biases that are going to appear in their writing one way or another. The only difference is that in the liberal model they claim that is not true. So if we are going to get biases either way isn't it safer for the writers and readers alike to acknowledge that that bias is there?

So although the world is heading in the direction of the Liberal model, the U. S. in many ways is heading the opposite direction and I like it. I'm not saying that the liberal is the worst model, I just don't think its the best, and I am a firm believer in the benefits of trying new things.

Group 1 Presentation.

Good Job group 1! I enjoyed your presentation. I appreciated that you brought in lots of valid information, especially about why journalism is important. Loved playing heads up 7 up! It was fun to kick it old school but more importantly it demonstrated your point -- journalism is here to help people make informed decisions that they would otherwise be making blindly.

What I think that applies to the most, or at least the first thing that comes to mind, is political journalism. Honestly with out CNN or MSNBC I don't think I would even be interested in voting for public officials because I would have no background information and I would feel like I was just playing eenie meenie miney mo.

Your presentation covered many different subjects, and I could tell you were really trying to tackle the who issue. You even talked about the future of journalism which I appreciated because it leads right into my groups presentation :).

Thank you for keeping us well informed

Chapters 1

First things first, I really enjoyed the very first story told in Elements of Journalism. It really puts journalism in perspective for me, and it does it in a way that makes it real and relevant to someone I can relate with. Not because I have ever been in a situation like that, but I am a teenage girl, like the one in the story.

And I agree with the message the story was trying to convey about what journalism is. It is a way of getting relevant information out to those who need it. I am sure that we could discuss this question for days and still never come up with the absolute, hands down answer that everyone agrees with, and as a class we have had pretty lengthy discussions about it, but this is the one way of defining it that really resonated with me.

Also, I really dislike the discussion all together. Because I know there is no answer! We should throw out some ideas and then we should just leave it up to individuals to decide what journalism means to them. All this ideological talk makes me dizzy.

Moving on to Mind of a Journalist. I enjoyed this reading more, mostly because it was shorter but also because it brought up a topic I had never thought about before. Why DO people decide to become journalists? And then, it answered the question for me without having to go through all these maybes and what ifs. It is interesting to point out that in a lot of ways being a journalist doesn't seem like a rational occupation, and what better way to start out a book about journalists thinking than to explain how one becomes a journalist in the first place!

So those are my thoughts on the reading. Not very deep, I know.

Test

Here is my test run for my journalism blog, since I have never done this before.