NBC Nightly News

This seemed like an appropriate post for today, since this is what we were talking about in class today.  A few weeks ago, I did the post on the local news, and this one is for the nightly news.  Before I go through what was on the news, I have to comment on the difference between these two types of news broadcasting.  We always talk in class about how the local news has more "fluff" than the nightly news, and I never realized how true that is.  While the local news does sometimes touch upon the larger issues, it spends much more time with "fluff" content, such as fires and robberies.  As was said in class today, the nightly news does tend to be more serious, but I found that it is still insufficient.

These, in order, were tonight's topics:

-Flooding in North Dakota along the Red River

-Tornadoes in the South

-The state of the U.S. economy... there were 652,000 new applicants for unemployment this year

-The Treasury Secretary has asked for more strict regulation on the financial system

-Obama's new strategy for the Middle East, to be officially announced tomorrow, but it is already known that it is not the same as the plan that he ran with

-Defective drywall that emits sulfuric gas, causing people to become sick

-Earthquakes in California, getting closer to San Andreas Fault

-Bonus system on Wall Street

-Passport applications down 25% from last year, less money, less travel

-"Making a Difference" this is a new addition to the nightly news, focuses on local people doing their part to make a difference during financial crisis. tonight it was a salon in Massachusetts that gives free haircut coupons to unemployed clients.

I realized while watching this that their is a very crucial question that we missed in today's class discussion: Why is there only a half hour for the news?  I mean, we did kind of discuss this when we were talking about what people want to see on TV, and it seems that they'd rather have entertainment than news.  If the nightly news had more time, I think that more of the issues that we need to hear about would make the cut.

Also, in class today, we learned all the reasons why media picks the stories that they do.  One of the biggest things that media likes to cover is crisis and tragedy.  This explained to me why flooding in North Dakota and tornadoes in the South were the first things on the news, while Obama's new Middle East strategy was shoved in the middle before defective drywall.  It strikes me as slightly pathetic that this defective drywall even made it on the news.  I think that the time spent discussing this could have been better spent on a more crucial social issue.

Overall, I don't know if NBC chose the "right" stories to put on tonight, maybe I think there are some things that are more important than others, but this is their decision.  Given what they chose, I think that they ordered the stories pretty well in order of importance.  At first I thought maybe the flooding in North Dakota wasn't that important, but then I remembered our class discussion and I guess it makes sense to report on disaster first.  Personally, I would have liked to see Obama's new strategy for the Middle East rank a little higher in importance.  Maybe tomorrow, when they have the full report on his plan there will be more time devoted to it.

The Girls Next Door

Sometimes I happen to come across reruns of E!'s show The Girls Next Door and the amusement of the subject matter of the show never ceases to amaze me.  Instead of waiting for one of the episodes to pop up, I went on youtube and found various clips from the show.  After looking through some of them, I picked this episode.  The episode opens with a few of the girls going to a trapeze class.  It starts as Bridget's (one of Heff's girlfriends in the show) idea, and she says that it is something that she has always wanted to try.  When they go, they make it seem like going to trapeze class is a totally normal event.  This is the biggest problem I usually have with this show is that they always seem to be doing something extravagant and seem to think that it is a totally normal thing.  The episode then goes into the girls panning the annual Midsummer Night's Dream Party, and being sure that they meet all of Heff's need at this party.

Usually when I watch this show I only think of how funny and ridiculous it is.  I mean, yeah this is someone's real life but this isn't REAL life.  It wasn't until I received it as an assignment that I asked myself how this may affect the socialization of young girls.  Me personally, I never watched anything like this when I was little.  I, however, had the luxury of a stay at home mom who could monitor what I was doing and what I was watching 24/7.  Now, this situation is much less common, and more children have their own bedrooms with their own TV in it.  With both parents working and out of the house and away from the children more often, I guess it is much more possible that kids are seeing this kind of stuff more regularly that I did.

If a young girl watched this show, she would be getting a lot of mixed messages about what her role in life is.  First, Heff has three girlfriends in his house where any number of hot young blondes with big boobs live.  This tells girls 1. that men will be more attracted to them if they look a certain way and 2. that it is a=okay for a man to be with multiple women.  On the show, all 3 of Heff's "girlfriends" tell him they love him, and he loves them too.  In my opinion, this is not what children should think of love as.  It should not be expressed to them that this kind of behavior is okay, because then you end up with girls sleeping around in middle and high school.  Another thing that this show tells girls is that they could live a fantasy life by being a playboy bunny.  That's all it is... a fantasy life.  There is no other place in the real world where young adults sleep until noon, hang out in their bikinis all day, and party all night.  The only place close to that is college, and that's not even the real world yet.  For example, the episode that I chose to write about earlier in this post, the girls went to a trapeze class.  In another episode I saw a few nights ago, the girls went to Paris and met the Prince.  This is worse than a Disney movie!!

As much as I am opposed to young girls watching this show, I have no opposition to it being on TV.  It's entertainment, pure and simple.  This is one of those times where maybe parents should be paying a little more attention to what their kids are watching on TV.  Every affect that this show could have on girls that I just discussed could be avoided by them just not watching it.  Or better yet.  Let your kids watch what they want to watch but pay enough attention to it and talk about it with them, explain to them that this is not normal, it is purely entertainment.

treehugger.com

When I was first asked to write with a link to an environmental blog, I knew that I would be annoyed with whatever I found there. While I do agree that in today's world we need to do what we can to protect the environment, I think that some people take it a little far. My dread got even worse when I stumbled across a website called treehugger.com. I skimmed through the posts with such titles as "Building the World with FlexForm Natural Composite Material," "Drink Soda Pop? You're Drinking Bisphenol A (BPA)", and "Uberstix, World's First Planet Positive Toy. But Are There Contenders?" just to name a few. The title that caught my attention the most was, "Nobody's Innocent When an Organic Smoothie Emits More CO2 Than a Coke." So I chose this post to do for the assignment. I was pretty shocked from the get go with this one because I was led to believe that anything organic was a tree huggers favorite. I always assumed that these people preferred all natural everything and organic this and preservative free that. So when I saw that they had gripes with something organic, I was intrigued.

The post starts off with the facts. A 330 mL aluminum can of Coca Cola emits 170 grams of CO2, while the subject of discussion, Innocent's 250 mL passion and mango fruit smoothie, emits 209 grams. OH MY GOD! First of all, half the people who read this probably drink the stuff simply because it is called innocent and the word organic appears on the label. Secondly, they probably all stopped drinking it after reading this because it emits a wopping 39 grams more CO2 than Coca Cola, and environmentalists worst nightmare. Like I said in the beginning, I am the first person to admit that we need to try to take steps to protect the environment. Okay, Coca Cola can are bad for the environment, but now ORGANIC smoothies aren't allowed either?

The post gets even weirder in the second part where it is explained that Innocent is looking for investors to become an international company. One of the company's that was interested was Coca Cola because they like the idea of supporting something "ethical and organic." Hmm.... this doesn't seem to make sense. Maybe Coca Cola will be able to help these people out a little in their packaging.

The other thing that I had to call into question after reading this post was why? Why in a world at war and in a huge economic crisis are we worried about 39 extra grams of CO2? Maybe I'm wrong, but even environmentally there are probably better things to worry about than a soda can versus a smoothie bottle. Fuel emissions. Natural gas depletion. The Oil crisis. Call me crazy but this is a little bit ridiculous.

NBC News at 5

Here is the rundown of the stories mentioned on NBC's 5:00 local news

-snow storm & weather

-airport delays

-back to winter storm

-shoveling for money-sanitation dept

-cancelled ny city public schools first time since 04

-more on storm...  central park sledders snow for sledding not packing for snowmen

-website.. school closings track storm send pics

-showing pics ppl sent of storm

-Wall Street: finally some real news!!

-lowest since april97 dow jones

-AIG bailout record corporate loss

-cutting/suspending dividends

-Lottery-mega millions going up and up, people want moneyy

-more on storm-connecticut

-current weather conditions

-local forecast-plenty more on storm

-late night with jimmy fallon... going on for conan o'brien

-MORE on storm!! back to Tim Minton

-plowing is uneven... really?

-small amount of people who lost power

-commuters in NJ having a tough time in storm

-port authority on keeping runways clear at airports

-sanitation department on keeping roads clean

-more more MORE on snow storm throughout east coast, more on flights being cancelled

-flu alert

-"hang up and drive" innitiative in NJ to stop drivers from using cell phones in the car

-MORE ON THE WEATER!! snow will freeze overnight

-Obama's healthcare reform

In the hour that NBC had for local news, I would guess that they spent about 90% of the time discussing the winter storm that hit the area in the past 24 hours.  The rest of what they talked about was for only a brief amount of time.  Critical issues such as Obama's healthcare plan were only brushed upon and then it was straight back to the storm.  It is understandable that the storm made the news because it was a bad storm, but NBC spent way too much time on the topic, and not enough time on other important issues.

$900 Million in Aide to Gaza, for Terrorists?

Today, the Daily News posted an article about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's plan to send $900 million in aide to Gaza. The article posed the question of whether or not this money would land in the hands of terrorist leader Hamas. Clinton seemed sure that her plan was careful enough not to end up supporting these terrorists but instead to rebuild Gaza in the aftermath of Hamas' war on Israel. The article went on and on discussing Hamas' destructive past and Clinton's need to keep a careful eye on him and on the reconstruction of Gaza.

Overall, a very informative editorial. But the question I found myself asking while I was reading this article is why the United States is even allowing Clinton to put $900 million in danger of falling into terrorist hands while we are in the middle of a recession. I agree that peace and stability will not be possible in the Middle East without our help, but I think that current times require that the United States be a little more careful with their money. In this case, there is a very real possibility that this money can end up in the hands of Hamas who would obviously not use it for the purposes intended, so why are we bothering? Imagine would $900 million could do in the U.S. right now.

Tennessee Guerilla Women

The blog Tennessee Guerilla Women is a feminist blog centered out of Tennessee with the purpose of ending sexism not only in Tennessee, but across the whole nation. This post focuses on an episode of Bill Maher's show Real Time. The author of the post discussed that in the particular episode, three women were on as guests. She was very sarcastic in her comments about that fact because, according to her, Bill Maher is usually very sexist. She then talks about the episode itself where one of the guests to the show, Rep. Maxine Waters, addressed Obama's plan to send more troops into Afghanistan. From this post, it is also clear that the blog is against the wars in the Middle East. This post also linked to a blog post on Huffington Post that detailed the episode of Real Time.

This post was followed by a comment that stated that this is a waste of time for the feminist movement; that Bill Maher has "a cast of three powerful and smart women, talks to them intelligently..." The person who left this comment obviously feels that Maher is not a sexist, that it would make no sense for him to have women on his staff and treat them respectfully if indeed he hated women. The comment feels that the people involved in this sector of the feminist movement are wasting their time and that there are more important things to focus on right now.

After considering both the post and the comment, I agree more with the person who left the comment. The post really did not give enough information for readers to agree with her side. She just blamed Maher as being sexist, giving no other evidence, and quoted Huffington Post. She spent so much time bashing Bill Maher when some of this time could have been used to further discuss the issue and Waters' opinion on it.

Mayor Bloomberg on Thin Ice with Political Parties

In today's issue of the New York Times, one of the front page stories, entitled "In Reversal, Mayor Now Woos Political Parties," detailed the struggle that Mayor Bloomberg is having obtaining support for running for his next term. The Mayor had previously decided that he would not run for a third term, but has recently changed his mind. The problem that he now has is that he has denounced any party alliance throughout his most recent term. The Bloomberg campaign is trying to render support from three parties in the city, the Republican, Independence, and Working Families Parties. However, Bloomberg has gone against all of these parties during his time in office. The article tells that Mayor Bloomberg ran, and won, under the Republican ticket twice, and then left the party in 2007, claiming himself as an Independent.

Mr. Bloomberg's problem with the Independence Party stemmed from divisions within the party itself. Bloomberg was planning on running for President and, in doing so, sided with one of his major supporters within the Independence Party. It was only when his plans for the Presidency failed that the mayor reached out to the Working Families Party for support, a support that they are not ready or willing to give.

The information presented in this article does not represent Mayor Bloomberg in a very positive light. It portrays him as a politician with only his own needs in mind. This is not something that Americans today want to see, even though it is really what is happening in American politics. This article is a prime example of the media exposing the corruption in politics. Not to say that Mayor Bloomberg is corrupt per say, but more so that he is taking advantage of his position. Bloomberg has a lot of money with which, according to the article, he uses as a bribe for the people from whom he needs support. The problem is that this takes some attention away from all of the good things that the Mayor has done for New York City. He has followed in Guiliani's footsteps as one to clean up the streets and make New York a cleaner, safer place. In his position, it is only human nature to try to take advantage of what you have in order to get to the top.