Unfinished Business - The New York Times

Today, I needed this one last blog post, so I went to The New York Times website in hopes of finding something interesting.  This editorial piece stood out to me the most.  It is talking about why Iraq is failing.  It is perfectly clear from the beginning of the article that the author did not support Bush's war there (who did?).  However, he also does not blame anything that the United States did for why Iraq is still so unstable.  He blames the Iraqi government, which has failed to make the changes necessary in ensuring peace and stability.

I thought that it was very interesting to have someone take this angle.  When I first started reading the article, I thought that it was going to be just another bash on Bush.   I found it kind of enlightening to see that someone saw another angle to the story and didn't want to just lay all of the blame upon the Bush administration.

Politics in Vernon, NJ

I was home to work this weekend.  As I was driving around my town of Vernon, NJ, it struck me what a huge joke politics are in my town.  In various yards I saw signs in people's yards in support of different candidates for town council.  I wondered who actually lived in those homes.  Did they really care what was going on, or are they just friends of the candidate?  The candidate that I saw the most signs for is currently President of the Town Council.  He signed a bill that promised my town a main street.  Well, it was passed and millions of dollars of construction and road work later, they found that the site goes through an Indian burial ground and that by law, they are not allowed to build on it.  I live in a tourist town.  Every summer and winter, people flock to Mountain Creek for the water park or ski slopes.  Main Street was supposed to have tons of cute little shops and restaurants to attract both locals and the visitors.  It was supposed to be something to build up the economy of my town.  Now, I live in a place with a Main Street that has nothing on it.  A place where the budget is gone and there was not enough rock salt to protect the people from the ice storms we suffered this winter, leaving people without power for over a week in some areas.  Now tell me, why in the WORLD would people want to re-elect the man who did this??

Network News v. the Daily Show

On Friday, I watched both the network news on NBC at 6:30 and the Daily Show at 11.  I have a few notes on what each show talked about, but I think that it is impossible to compare the two programs.  I think that what Jon Stewart says about his show is very true: people cannot use it as their main news source, it is only meant for comedic purposes and views must have some sort of knowledge about what is going on before watching it.  Anyone who uses the Daily Show as a primary news source is out of their mind.  How could you even get the jokes without knowing the story?  And as for the network news, it is a joke.  I already did the blog post on the coverage, in which I also used NBC, and it is pathetic the amount of time that is spent on insignificant stories.  I do not think that the network news really serves as a much better news source than the Daily Show.

Before taking this class, I watched the news on NBC every night.  I still do, but the difference is that now I think I am just watching it out of habit.  I depend much more on the internet for my news than I ever have before.  I go around to a variety of different sites to get different views of what is going on.

Hannity

On the April 29, 2009 episode of the show, Hannity showed a recap of Obama's first 100 days in office.  The recap basically showed all the things that went wrong, or all of the things that the conservatives did not agree with.  When I did my post on CNN versus Fox News, I really saw no difference.  However, on Hannity's show, I saw just how conservative Fox News can be.  Personally, I am a conservative, so I really did not see anything wrong with the video, and actually agreed with quite a bit of it.  I think that the United States sensationalized this man and let him have free reign for 100 days, paying little attention to what was going on.  The video showed a lot of truths.  Promises that Obama made to the people that he has not followed through with.  One thing that struck me in particular was the fact that Obama gave a specific date for when the war on terror would be over and all of the American troops could come home.  How is that even possible?  No one man can say exactly when a war will end, especially a war like this one where half of the enemies may be yet unknown.  

However, there is another side to this.  This may kind of fall into another comparison of CNN and Fox News, but it is necessary.  CNN has up on their website a progress report of Obama's first 100 days.  Instead of critiquing what he has done wrong or praising what has gone right, they just pose questions and tell what Obama intends to do in order to solve it.

I think that both of these types of coverage are important in that it is crucial to understand exactly what a President is doing with his powers and that it is necessary to know what he intends to do.  I think that Hannity delivered a very good video with important substance, things that the American people need to know.

CNN v. Fox News

Yesterday, I spent a little bit of time flipping back and forth between CNN and Fox News.  I'll be honest, I usually only watch either of these programs when either I have nothing else to do or there is something specific going on that the other networks are not yet covering.  I have always found both to be kind of boring, and always preferred to get news and information from the internet.  Well, after spending nearly an hour back and forth between the two, my mind has not changed.  I still find both to be rather boring and really do not see much difference between the two.  I know that it is said that Fox News is more conservative and CNN offers objective coverage, but to me it was hard to tell because both lacked any real information and substance.

For instance, when talking about President Obama's crack down on business taxes, both CNN and Fox News reported on what the plan was.  To me, this is a pretty important thing because I think that the government needs to crack down on the things that American businesses get away with so that they can give back to the average person who has done nothing wrong their entire life.  However, neither of these networks really seemed to care, and they both moved swiftly to the next topic.

Classmate Blog

I was just looking though everyone's blogs when I came across one that Lindsay wrote about the swine flu and thought I'd post about that because I had also just written something about it. According to Lindsay's post, television news coverage of the outbreak was horrible. I thought that was kind of interesting because I was not too disappointed with what I heard on NPR about it. They gave the symptoms, in addition to the report that I posted on a few minutes ago about the controversy about the U.S.-Mexico border.

I think that it is really interesting to see that the television news is doing such a poor job reporting on the outbreak. And from what I have seen, I totally agree with Lindsay. Everything that I have seen on TV about the swine flu kind of made me feel like I needed to hide under my bed and stay away from people until it is over. Then i sit back and think about it for five seconds and realize that twenty infected people in New York City out of the millions of people who live there is not really that bad.

Another thing that I found to be interesting was that Internet news coverage seems to be about the same as television coverage. Articles like this give the impression that there is no hope... that we are doomed to the swine flu.

Also, as I said in my other post about this issue, the United States is perfectly equipped with the medical resources to treat the swine flu. We aren't living in Mexico people!! If you're feeling sick, do what you always do and go to the doctor for some medicine. No need for all of this panic really.

"Good Night and Good Luck"

Last week in class, we viewed the film Good Night and Good Luck which was about a news show in the 1950s dealing with the exploitation by Senator Joseph McCarthy of people he accused of being communists. The main characters of the movie, Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, sought to bring him down and prove that he was falsely accusing these people.

The film related really well to a lot of what we have discussed in class in regards to the responsibilities of the press. I think that this film shows that sometimes in media doing the right thing is not always easy, or allowed. A lot of the people who worked for the station were worried that they would get accused of being communist if they were seen publicly denouncing the accusations of McCarthy.

While the film was a little bit slow-moving, it really showed what the media goes through. When they know that something is wrong and that they have the power to expose it, it may not always be in their best interests to do so. I would like to hope that there are still some people like Murrow and Friendly working in the media today so that if there were a situation where the media found out that something was going on, I would get to know. The sad part is, however, that I am not really sure that there are that many people left like that.