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.