Category Archives: News & Events

Movie Review: “Blood Brother”

Posted in News & Events by

I went into the theater expecting to cry. A movie about poor, Indian children with HIV/AIDS is heartbreaking, why wouldn’t I expect to be bawling my eyes out in five minutes?

But surprisingly, I found myself laughing more often than shedding tears. The documentary, “Blood Brother,” focused on the reality of what this young man, Rocky Braat, was doing for the orphanage in India, but the pleasant surprise was that this reality was not all bad. It wasn’t all tragic illness and hardship and death. It was definitely those things. But the reality was also that these children are just like any others- ones without AIDS, with both parents, with a need for love.

Rocky’s goal to care for all of these kids, to love them and treat them like they aren’t sick, is heroic. His decision to move to India, stay there, get married, and care for these kids, was obviously not made lightly. And considering he moved into a completely different culture, where, in his words, “they are 70 or 80 years behind the times,” it is no wonder he faced challenges. But he could overcome those because he knew that what he was doing had a purpose and it was bigger than himself. He was and is saving these kids.

Rocky and his friend, Steve, said multiple times before the movie played in the theater and in the movie, that they aren’t funny, they wish they were funnier, that India sucked the humor out of them. And yet the film was filled with every small, happy moment that you would never imagine a child living with HIV/AIDS in India to have. They ran and laughed and played. They were hung by their pants in trees and played practical jokes. They spoke with the innocence that only children have. They loved unconditionally because they were in such desperate need of love themselves. They smiled with their whole faces and were proud of even their smallest accomplishments. They fully enjoyed and appreciated pizza more than any American kid I know. And all of this made the audience laugh- made us love the kids ourselves, made us forget the fear of HIV/AIDS.

The biggest impact of this whole movie, I believe, is seeing the human emotions cross boundaries and cross cultures. We may not understand their religious customs, or their beliefs or rituals, or why they don’t have running water or toilets. We may not understand their eating habits or transportation or the way they build their houses. We may not get the way people in India live–but we understand their sadness. We see pain and suffering. We understand happiness and joy. We see the smiles and laughter. And we get that. And that is why people will see this movie and donate money to help Rocky and the orphanage. That is why people like Rocky go to these countries. That is why we can laugh when these kids make jokes and why we cry when we see them on the verge of death, battling AIDS. We may not understand cultures, but we understand human emotions.

This documentary also shed some light on AIDS and HIV. I don’t believe it was entirely intentional, but nevertheless, the audience is struck by how people view the disease. People in India have this view that HIV/AIDS is something to fear. They aren’t entirely educated about it. They are so afraid, they shun the women and children, won’t touch them or eat the same food. Disease and illness and death is scary. But these children can feel the fear and you can see that it kills them. That is what is heartbreaking–to see how the kids are affected by hatred.

What would any American do in that situation, though? Are we so superior, so much more educated that we wouldn’t fear them as well? How many people do you know with HIV or AIDS? This fear is not unfounded and it is not something to admonish. Many people are afraid. Fear is a lack of understanding, and HIV/AIDS is a difficult thing to understand. The important thing is to learn–to realize that the kids need love and attention and care, and that touching them and cooking their food does not pass on the disease.

This film shows a true and real side of children in India that is not all tragedy and despair. Those kids captured the hearts of the audience, just as they captured Rocky’s. I did cry at the end of the movie, as Rocky got married to a beautiful Indian girl and hugged his best friend and took pictures with the kids. I cried because he found his happiness in being with these orphans.

I had to quickly wipe my tears before the lights came up, and as I walked out of the theater into the city of Pittsburgh, all I could think was, “why do we need all this stuff?” 

 

photo credit: http://dribbble.com/shots/513963-Blood-Brother-Promo

Achieving Olympic Dreams: Running on Blades

Posted in News & Events by

Of all the inspirational stories that emerge from the coverage of the Olympics, the one that caught my eye a few days ago was that of Oscar Pistorius, of South Africa. He is called the Blade Runner, using prosthetics in place of both of his lower legs and feet. Oscar is quite literally a runner without legs. If that doesn’t inspire someone, what will?

He was born without fibulas and was not even a year old when his legs were amputated. Think about the kind of life he probably had, growing up. It’s hard enough to live in the hard world with all your limbs. And still he had Olympic dreams. He still knew that he could do more, even without his legs. And luckily, we do live in this hard world, because it enabled him to find a way around his “handicap.” Building him some prosthetic legs put him on the path to greatness. If only it could work like that for everyone with the Olympics in their sights.

Pistorius worked hard and has to have tons of natural talent in order to get where he is today. But he also has to be incredibly lucky. Not every double-amputee with or without prosthetic limbs ends up in the Olympics. He is lucky that he has the money to afford his state-of-the-art legs, and to replace them when necessary. He’s lucky that his case was reviewed and ruled in his favor to allow him to compete in this year’s Olympics. It can’t be easy for him. Why don’t you try running with no legs?

Yet there are still bitter critics saying that his artificial legs give him an unfair advantage; they give him spring in his step that other runners don’t have; they reduce his fatigue because there are no muscles there to use up oxygen and make him tired. But if he had such an advantage, wouldn’t there be more amputees running as fast as he is?

It might be easier for people to yell “unfair!” than to admit that their guy will get beat by a runner with no legs. We want everything to be equal and fair, but that’s not how the world is. It’s not even fair for the people who do have their legs. Some of those runners have had better coaching, or are in a geographically more agreeable country or city. Some athletes are better off financially and can concentrate on just running, while others are trying to hold a job and provide for a family. People aren’t going to come from the exact same circumstances, so can’t we call it unfair for everyone? Can we kick everyone out who we think is too old or too young, not allow someone to compete because they had more time to practice than we did?

His artificial blades were proven to not give him any extra spring. They are shock absorbing, like many running shoes claim to be, but they do not add extra power. I’m sure with today’s technology rapidly advancing, that power boost may  not be far behind. But of course, the Olympic committee would shoot down a competitor with a power boost in their feet, just as they would someone who takes performance enhancing drugs. There is obviously a line between artificial feet and rockets for legs.

It would not be easy to learn to walk on blades and certainly not easy to run fast enough to qualify in the Olympics. Whatever “advantages” this guy has, it is not his feet.  I salute him. I hope he runs the best he can and keeps up with the best of them. I hope he wins medals and proves to everyone that you can achieve dreams even with disadvantages like the loss of your legs. I hope he becomes an inspiration to other amputees in the world, and those who are trying to overcome major challenges in their lives. I do not, however, think that he should be able to compete in the Paralympics after the London Olympics. If he has the chance to prove how great he is now, he shouldn’t need to prove himself again, or against other amputees. He earned the right to compete in the Olympics and he deserves that. But no one else gets two tries. Now that is what is unfair.

As technology continues to improve and we become better able to make limbs for amputees, and give people the chances that they wouldn’t have otherwise had, we’re going to have to keep re-evaluating what is “fair” and who has the “advantage.” It is a continuous process, just as everything else dealing with rising technology is an ongoing process. With everything in a state of constant change, nothing is going to be cut and dry forever.

Oscar Pistorius proves that someone without legs can run in the Olympics. Hopefully this will open doors for others like him and we can continue to be supportive of all athletes who work hard and persevere through all the obstacles they are given.

And if he can run races in the Olympics, without legs, I can surely get off the couch and hit the gym once in awhile. Like I said, truly an inspiration…

 

image from usatoday.com

Tragedy in Colorado

Posted in News & Events by

The news about the shootings in the Colorado movie theater  is like an addiction. It’s like cracking your knuckles. It’s like driving past an animal killed on the street and you don’t want to look but you just can’t help yourself. Of course we are being constantly fed this news by the broadcast networks and CNN. We are updated through every newspaper and all social media outlets. They are forcing this news upon us everywhere, but even if we wanted to, we couldn’t turn away.

This tragedy hits so many levels of our society, it touches upon all kinds of issues that maybe the nation should be compelled to address. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families because it could have just as easily been one of us, or our brother, or daughter, or girlfriend. Every theater across the nation was packed with the exact same kinds of people, filled with costume-clad Batman fans, anxiously awaiting this sequel, excited to tell all their friends about it. Everyone in every theater bought tickets in advance, stood in line for hours, bought popcorn and flooded these theaters. It could have been any of us. We were all in theaters that night. That’s why we can’t turn away.We hear the victims’ stories and our hearts cry out for them and we just can’t imagine what kind of person could do this, especially the person with that infuriatingly satisfied smile on his face that we see plastered all over TV’s and newspapers.

Twelve people have been killed, and 58 injured. This mass shooting has been compared to the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. It is the result of a sick person buying weapons and ammunition legally and easily and deliberately walking into a crowded theater and firing at people who had limited ways of escape. Maybe some things need to be re-evaluated in the wake of this tragedy.

The biggest issue that has been raised in the news is that of gun control. Journalists and politicians are saying that Obama and Romney should now have to address this issue in detail and take a public stance. On the one hand, it seems that the government should restrict gun ownership. Right now, we are giving guns out to people who obviously shouldn’t have them. The other side of the coin is that it is our Constitutional right to own guns and be able to defend ourselves. This may be, but so many people will be buying guns for self defense and firing away that we’ll just end up with more innocent casualties. Such laws like those in Florida where the Trayvon Martin shooting occurred not too long ago, allow people to shoot and kill if it is in self-defense and they’re in fear of their lives. But whose word do we listen to?

Perhaps gun licenses should be controlled just as alcohol is controlled. We are allowed to drink alcohol in the U.S., and the government can’t tell us not to. But we have to wait until we’re 21 and there are rules even after that. You can’t buy alcohol for minors, you can’t drive under the influence, bars are allowed to cut you off if you’ve had too many. Maybe people should only be allowed to have one gun and only a limited amount of ammunition. If you have a gun for self-defense, you shouldn’t need more than a few bullets–certainly not 6,000 rounds of ammunition.

Last summer, as a news intern, I sat in on the trial of a young man who killed three police officers. I watched the court go through every piece of weaponry he had in his home and was appalled. The sheer number of guns and amount of ammunition led the court to believe that the act was premeditated, along with other evidence, and I believe that is what we can assume from the Colorado shooter. No normal, sane person needs so much weaponry and I believe this needs to be regulated in some way.

A smaller issue that this shooting might bring up is the subject of violence in the media. Is violence and killing a direct result of seeing violence in movies and video games, or hearing violent song lyrics? Advocates of the direct effects of media might say yes. Children are taught from a young age that people shoot and kill each other in movies and games–why not in real life? Kids imitate things they see on the screen, they act out battles and fight with pretend weapons. Maybe this is only pretend for so long before they might try it out in real life. Opponents might say that all kinds of children see violence in the media and yet very few of them actually imitate this violence in real life. Whatever the case may be, this Colorado shooter may have been acting out his Batman fantasy, saying he was the Joker and proceeding to inflict harm on innocent people.

Underlying all of this is the societal issue that we as Americans apparently raise, teach and allow people to shoot and kill other human beings. We have a moral crisis at stake here. Crime is everywhere, even if it hasn’t been headlined in the news. Where did any person get the idea that it is okay to take another human life? What kind of morality is being promoted in this country?

We have politicians who are overly concerned with their campaign finances and advertisements, spreading rumors about each other and mud-slinging, just to win the “race.” We have public officials who are distracted by gay marriage rights, as if that pertains to anyone but the two people involved. We have news outlets that are sidetracked by celebrity scandal.

There are some things that are distractions, sensationalized pieces of news, and there are other things that are worth the addiction. We should take notice when we see a story that we can’t turn away from, when we can’t turn off the TV because we can’t believe something this horrible could happen. Maybe that’s our wake-up call, the red light going off telling us something is wrong and needs to be changed. Because how else could we keep watching this tragic coverage over and over and not want to fix it?

New Drama, Different Setting

Posted in News & Events by

This past Sunday was the series premiere of an HBO show called “The Newsroom.” Now of course, I don’t get HBO on my cable so originally, I thought nothing of it, couldn’t watch it, no big deal. Then I went to New York and talked to my friend from school who said he had watched it and thought it was really good, had texted our professor about it, etc. Well, if there is something worth texting the professor about, then maybe I better watch it. I came across the link to the show on Twitter and clicked. What better way to spend my Wednesday night than diving into a new TV series? So now I’m hooked.

I think I’m drawn to this new series for several reasons. First, it is a drama. I love drama. You can tell right away that there are relationship issues between people at the workplace and that sooner or later it will either be sweet and romantic or it will blow up and get ugly. Yes, it might be predictable and maybe some people don’t like that, but I do. The drama doesn’t stop with the love circles and triangles and hexagons though. There are already major rifts between co-workers. People hate Will. They say he is mean and it is clear no one wants to work with him. But you don’t see that right away because you’re still captivated and boggled by his tirade against America and you see him as all wise and righteous, telling people to use their common sense and not be hung up on the lie that America is the greatest country in the world. But then as you see his interactions with his staff, you realize that that outburst was part of his arrogance. You wonder how his whole news anchor thing will even work if he doesn’t have a staff and in walks his old flame, Mackenzie. Drama.

Second, I love the world of television production. The people who don’t like this show might say that the drama is the same as any other show, just in a different setting. But this setting is one we, as the viewers of television, don’t see. This is a behind-the-scenes look at how the news is produced, at the fast and furious way of life of a news producer. This is the kind of world I have studied, learned and love. This show is dealing with real events and in hindsight, we can re-examine how they played out. We can look back and see how the news started, where it ended up, where rumors came from. The producer of the show, Aaron Sorkin, says now that this real news is behind us, we can see the actual implications. Sorkin says, in the show the news can be changed– “We can make our guys smarter than everybody else” or just luckier. And as far as my experience in newsrooms has gone, this show is pretty accurate. It’s not like a hospital show, where the doctors have sex in corners and gossip in front families, and learn deep, valuable lessons from the simple words of a patient (Grey’s Anatomy–not that I’m bashing the show, I’m actually obsessed with it, despite its obvious inaccuracies).

Third, the show has a hook. It’s not all laid out there before you without any guessing. We’re not sure what the exact history is behind Will and Mackenzie. We can tell that there is tension between Maggie and her boyfriend and we can’t wait to see how that plays out. We can tell that some of the other people in the newsroom, like Jim, are about to play major roles but we’re not sure how yet.

And finally, there’s a little bit of unexpected humor. The news is all death and destruction, this much is obvious. The characters are serious about their jobs, they’re fighting about the staff, contracts are being negotiated–this is serious stuff. And then suddenly someone yells out “Punjab!” and the viewers are cracking up. No one on the show is trying to make jokes or laughing, but it’s adding some relief to a very serious and stressful news environment.

The show compelled me to think about the state of America and the state of democracy. Apathetic Americans watching the show are forced to think about how the news was and is supposed to unite everyone. The news is supposed to bring about change, spur independence and solidify freedom.

“The Newsroom” is also a rebuttal against all those who say that journalism is corrupt or dying. It is a fight for the truth. It is an insight into a world often criticized because it is misunderstood. And it is hope, that with passion, good sources and good journalism, the news can enlighten citizens, foster honest and fair discussion, and restore the core of democracy. You can’t help but feel moved and empowered watching Mackenzie’s zealous fight to take over and produce fantastic news.

 

Photo from hbo.com

The Global Reality of a Media World

Posted in News & Events by

I read an opinion column today in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about the state of the world discussed at Rio+20, in terms of carbon emissions, climate change, and sustainable development. The author, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and those at the United Nations Conference, call for an end to extreme poverty, less carbon emission from the energy system, slower population growth, sustainable food supplies, and protection of the environment. But those of you reading this, who probably have at least six other tabs open on your screen, switching from Facebook to Pinterest, updating Twitter on your phone, while texting your friend, are probably nodding your head in agreement, thinking yes, it’s probably a good idea to save the world, yet how many of you got up to turn a light off? How many of you have the TV on while you’re on your laptop, reading blogs and updating social media, obviously not even watching the TV? I admit, I have the TV on. I like having the Today Show on in the background of my morning and if something interesting stands out, I turn my attention to the television.

This is the reality of the world today. People are perpetually connected and plugged in and so immersed in their personal lives and the virtual lives of their friends. People would rather “pin” a link to their dream wedding dress and tell hundreds of Twitter users that the line in Starbucks today is incredibly long than shut off their technology and plant trees. I’m not saying that all people are like this, but this is our reality.

On the other hand, our reality is also high carbon emissions and global warming that eventually will destroy the planet. This is what scientists tell us, but so many people don’t believe it or don’t want to believe it. These claims seem extreme. People just aren’t motivated to look outside their own neighborhoods. We say we want what’s best for our children and no one can deny that. But our ability to look far ahead, hundreds or thousands of years is limited. We see the reality that is right now and right now the sun is shining, the grass is growing, the birds flit around the backyard. Right now the kids have enough to eat and go to great public schools. Right now, I can’t afford a new energy-efficient vehicle, but that’s okay because there’s enough gas in my car, and GetGo and Giant Eagle are helping me save a few cents at the pump. The concern about overpopulation, famine and disease in third world countries doesn’t hit home because, well, we can’t see them. All we see are the sad, slow-mo advertisements on TV telling us to donate just 25 cents a day, but everyone thinks those are over-exaggerated to draw a few more quarters from the crowd.

So what can be done?

If we can’t get everyone to agree on the current state, how can we possibly expect people to agree on the measures that must be taken?

So many people are calling for action from the younger generations. The recent college graduates, like myself, and the students. Treaties and “Sustainable Development Goals,” while great in theory, won’t work unless the information and the impact somehow resonates with the young, tech-savvy, Facebook-stalking, status-updating crowd. So how do we make it resonate? As a communication major, passionate about media, TV, video production, I am a firm believer that media can reach people in ways that newspaper articles and politicians can’t. The only problem is that even media may not always work. You might remember the KONY2012 video that almost instantly went viral with almost 1 billion viewers on YouTube. This video resonated with me and probably hundreds of thousands of others. But it did not resonate with everyone. The video was a big topic of discussion in my college media and politics class and it is up for debate why this video was such an instant hit and then almost just as quickly fell from the spotlight. I’m sure it motivated some people to buy the bracelets and post signs and this kind of enthusiasm is what we need to save the world, all the time. (But that’s another topic.)

So when you think about how to reach the audience, the young internet generation, a YouTube video might work. Or a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, or a blog post. A story on the 6 o’clock news might work, or the endorsement of pro athletes and celebrities. But really, it’s going to be all of that and more. The world won’t change just because someone writes a blog post, or a newspaper column. It won’t change if someone makes the most creative 30-minute YouTube video of the year. It won’t change if politicians put it to a vote. In Sachs’ article he writes, “Since politicians follow public opinion rather than lead it, it must be the public itself that demands its own survival, not elected officials who are somehow supposed to save us despite ourselves.” The public will only demand change if we all agree. The whole world needs to agree. We will only all agree if we are inundated with the information, if we are convinced through all outlets that this is the change we need to see.

We see evidence every day of technology becoming better and people wanting to use it. Take Apple. They could come out with a new, faster, better product every month (oh wait, they do…) and people buy it and use it and promote it. People want better things, they want to be on the edge of innovation. We wouldn’t have students majoring in engineering and science if this wasn’t true. We just need the motivation to convince the world that sustainability is what’s better. That energy-efficiency is what’s better. That everyone’s lives will be better if we all adopt this world-saving technology and practices. I hope that this blog post will add to the global conversation. Hopefully others will continue to flood all media with the facts and someday soon, maybe we’ll all agree.

Apathetic Citizens–Unite!

Posted in News & Events by

People might be spending more time with social networks and entertainment programs, but they still manage to unite for a common interest.

According to the theories of selective exposure, perception and retention, people either avoid information that is incongruent with their own beliefs, or if they do view this information, they consume it through biased eyes or remember only the parts that adhere to their beliefs. Earlier in the year, we also talked about how people seem to be paying less attention to hard news, and a new genre of infotainment is becoming more prevalent. People are actively choosing to watch the Daily Show, for example, because they agree with John Stewart’s more negative criticisms of politicians and governmental practices, or at least find him entertaining. If this is the only “news” people view, we would say that they are only exposing themselves to the ideas that already fit with their beliefs. It is widely known that conservatives watch FOX news and liberals watch CNN and MSNBC. Even on these generally hard news sources, we can see some evidence of infotainment. One of CNN’s recent tweets today was “Do allergies actually benefit your health?” One of the stories on the U.S. news page of MSNBC was “Teen banned from prom over Confederate dress.” On the ABC News home page, “Katherine Heigl adopts second baby.” And even on the home page of FOXNews, “Does the G-spot exist? New study fuels debate.”

We can speculate, then, that even though these are traditionally hard news sources, they are finding that people like infotainment. People like to be entertained and with so many other outlets to find entertaining information, games, and social media, the hard news sites are just trying to keep up and compete. Remember, news is a business.

So scholars argue—are people becoming apathetic? Are people becoming less involved in the governmental process and less knowledgeable about important issues? According to Facebook’s newsroom, there were 845 million active users at the end of December 2011. According to a Time Magazine articlein September 2011, there were 100 million active Twitter accounts, with an average of 230 million tweets per day. According to Wikipedia, television ratings showed that in 2008, The Daily Show had 1.45 to 1.6 million viewers daily.

With these statistics, it would certainly seem like people are turning more and more to media that can entertain, especially media that is available on mobile devices, and has quick and easy access. So are these scholars right? Do people care less about what’s going on in the world and more about what’s going on in their world?

I would argue that while so many people are turning to Facebook, Twitter, and entertainment TV shows, the media still has the power to move people to action. Even those who selectively choose the media that they watch decide what is important to them and they are moved to act on it. People who may appear so apathetic in their TV show choice and entertainment value still do care about the world around them.

For example, the MSNBC website prominently displays a headline reading “Autistic boy wired up to show teacher bullying” with a video next to it. In this video, a father is outraged by the abuse his son endured at school, which he secretly recorded, and he posts a YouTube video displaying his feelings and several of the recordings. This video post led to the school firing this boy’s teacher. The video has about 1.5 million views. On the page, there is a petition that sympathetic viewers may sign to show their support for the father and his son and to try to change New Jersey legislature so that teacher who bully students are immediately fired. This petition has been signed by over 85,000 people.

Another example of people stepping up as active participants comes from a story on FOXNews this morning about the Arizona immigration law Senate Bill 1070. Immigrants and pro-immigration activist groups are taking a stand today and protesting what they believe is a discriminatory law, a continuation of their protests two years ago when the bill was signed.

And finally, we see millions of people step up and rally behind Presidents, rally behind Presidential candidates, rally for low interest rates for students and the death of Osama bin Laden. Even recently on the University of Delaware’s campus, where a few years ago, the students here were known notoriously as apathetic, the students have become more involved; they left their houses in the middle of the night to march to Memorial Hall. The students here rallied for justice in the Trayvon Martin case. People may enjoy connecting with their friends on Facebook and they may like to see what their roommate has to say about her exam on Twitter. People might find John Stewart humorous and they might not want to look for every angle of every story every day. But when they find something they care about, many people in this country find a way to become active members of the community. Whether they are signing an online petition against teacher bullying or passing along the message about KONY2012, many people are still finding ways to be informed and be engaged. And while, their selective exposure, perception and retention might skew their information and might make them slightly biased, I think the most important part is that they found something. 

Citizen Journalism and Social Media

Posted in News & Events by

This a blog post that I wrote for my Communications class a few weeks ago. The class, taught by Professor Lindsay Hoffman, was an introduction into analyzing how the media and politics work together to form what we know as “political communication.” Prof. Hoffman featured several students’ entries from our class on her blog for The Huffington Post.

Here is what I had to say about citizen journalism:

In this age of expanding internet and social media, more people are turning to online sources for their news. It’s faster, easier and more convenient when we are already perpetually connected. This also requires news outlets to produce news content at an unprecedented rate. News organizations are constantly competing to be the first to break a story, if not the only ones to do so, and it’s very convenient that Twitter’s “retweet” button allows for quick and vast dissemination of any piece of information. It is just this exact tool that also gets news outlets into trouble as we can see with the false breaking news that South Carolina’s Governor, Nikki Haley, would soon be indicted.

An article in the New York Times details how the unfounded information, posted on a small blog, called the Palmetto Public Record, went viral after just about twenty minutes. In the race to be first with information, the blog article was reposted by several news organizations, including major news outlets like the Washington Post. With tens of thousands of followers, the false information quickly spread across the nation and cyberspace. News organizations made corrections later, but the damage to Haley’s reputation was done.

We’ve discussed in class that multi-media is becoming more and more popular, especially online sources such as Twitter, where consumers can get news in 140 characters or less. This is especially appealing to the public as iPhone and iPad sales increase and computer screens are made even smaller. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook also allow for the public to feel that they are more a part of the news process by promoting “retweets” and “likes” so that friends and followers can stay up to date on the news as well.

The trend of this so-called “citizen journalism” becomes more popular with blogs and Twitter because we know that realistically, news correspondents and journalists can’t be everywhere, covering everything. We have come to rely on this citizen journalism to fill us in on the things that major news organizations miss and to fill the holes with on-the-scene footage and pictures. Major news channels and TV networks, like CNN and NBC ask the audience to send in photos of storms, for example, or if they “see news happening” to call the hotline. As a society, we have come to accept this and we trust the major news outlets to filter out the information and present what is real and true in an unbiased way. But this takes time and resources—things that journalists can’t afford if they want to stay on top and keep their ratings higher than anyone else’s. This is all part of the politics of the media. The ideal of the news is to report events objectively, but the reality is that news needs to appeal to the audience in order to get viewers and readers and to stay in business.

This leads us to stories such as Haley’s false indictment reports. News outlets and citizen bloggers are so anxious to get the news and spread the news—especially when it is scandalous and sensational, two things that make a story newsworthy—so the fact-checking and filtering stops. It is natural to say, next, that journalists are humans and as capable of making mistakes as anyone else. But the ease and speed of social media dissemination leads to grave errors, spread to tens of thousands of people. So where do we draw the line? Is citizen journalism only valuable to the public up to a point?

We recently discussed in class that the media have the ability to frame the way the public sees the story.  A story can be framed in many different ways, depending on the context and the word choice and language used. There is no story written that was not written with some kind of frame. This goes along with the notion of bias that we talked of earlier in the semester as well. Journalists are required to present the news objectively, without bias. But there is rarely a case where there isn’t at least a little bias. As we also said, there is no one “truth,” there is only the truth as we see it, and each person sees it differently. So who is to say that the way the citizen journalist sees a story or event, is worse or less truthful than the way the New York Times journalist may see the same event? This is what advocates of citizen journalism may say.

However, we also know that journalists at news organizations have been trained to check facts and examine all possible known sides of a story. Citizen journalists on the other hand, have not, and their blogging and tweeting therefore cannot and should not be evaluated on the same level.

We saw the detrimental effects of social media news dissemination when Joe Paterno’s death was falsely reported and reposted by and to millions on Twitter. The New York Times wrote an article afterwards explaining the mix-up and what followed as they tried to make sense of the power of social media.

Social media outlets allow for non-journalists to post and repost “news” or even just commentary and false information can go viral all too easily. While social media sites are admittedly a growing outlet for news, the information must be critically evaluated before it can be noted as “truth.” Many citizens do not have the knowledge to read news critically and to accurately make a judgment on its authenticity. Until all citizens can effectively evaluate information on social media sites themselves, there is no way that we can use Twitter and Facebook as effective tools for “citizen journalists.”