The Final (hopefully the right time stamp this time)

The mass media are depicted into six different models: Reporters of objective fact, neutral adversary, public advocate, profit-seeker, propagandist, and the relation between public association and the newspaper. These models were created to show how the media works and show why it acts how it does. The public, politicians, and the media thought up these models. Anyone who keeps in touch with the media can categorize themselves with one of the models. Each model has its own way of perceiving how the government, citizens, and audience should conduct themselves.

The first model is Reporters of Objective Fact. This model allows reporters to choose what we hear about in the news. They decide what is important enough for his/her viewers to be informed about. The most common conception about this model is that it doesn’t intervene with politics. This model only acts as a service to the public of the current events. It does not give you any arbitrary news that it suspects you don’t need to hear. This model is the one people most rely on for the news. The one complaint about this model is people who are looking for the news only get a fraction of it. It is impossible to give all the news in the world in an hour segment or on 50 pages of a newspaper so reporters decide for you what is important in your life.
The next model is Neutral Adversary. This model is the watchdog of the government. This model watches government officials and reports on anything they find to be newsworthy. These are the people who go to the press conferences and ask questions. They separate the truth from the lies. They give the public the truth about politicians so they can perceive them for who they really are and not base their opinion off of false information.
The third model of mass media is Public Advocate. This model helps the public stay on top of EVERYTHING that is happening in politics and not “just the facts.” Jan E. Leighley points out six traits this type of media should have. They are to

• “Provide information, discussion, and debate on public affairs

• Enlighten the public so as to make it capable of self-government

• Safeguard the rights of individuals by serving as a watchdog against government
• Provide a medium of advertising for the economic sector of society

• Provide entertainment

• Maintain financial self-sufficiency in order to be free from the influence of special interests”

This type of journalism is not so popular but it is growing. These journalists feel that citizens should be polled and interviewed about what they feel about the political world. Citizens are the ones that politics are affecting so they should know the most about what is going on.
Profit-Seeker is the fourth model of the media. This model deals with companies that are owned by individuals who are in the business to make money. They don’t care as much about the news or keeping up with current events. Their goal is to keep the audience entertained. Once they have the audience entertained then they get companies to advertise products on their channel for money (commercials). This is the most used model in today’s world of media. This model has one objective: to make as much money as possible.
The fifth on the list for the models of media is Propagandist. Propagandists are those journalists who praise and support the persons in the higher government positions. Their main focus is for the citizens to understand why these people are in higher power. These journalists filter out the news that they feel will be adequate for others to see and discard the material that is not fit. The main difference between this model and the other models is that each economical and political subject is taken care of by the current media system.
The final model of media is the relation between public association and the newspaper. Alexis de Tocqueville explains this model of media (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch2_06.htm). This model is supposedly the fastest and most efficient way of spreading the news. The newspaper is the only way to get everyone to get the same idea of a subject at one time. This idea of association by newspaper only works if it does by many people. “Newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers.” In this model they each need one another to survive.
The model I believe to be the most common and most used today is the profit- seeker. Nowadays people don’t care what they put in the media just as long as they have an audience. If they have an audience then companies want to put their product in that place for advertisement. No matter what, everyone is looking for the quick dollar.
Mainstream media is the most influential type of media that we have today. It consists of newspapers, television, and radio. It has been influencing us since the first newspaper was delivered. Not every person believes in the same type of media. Every country has their own way of delivering the news that is most important to their citizens. In view of newspapers, in Britain they have The Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/britain), in America it’s the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/), in Israel its Haaretz (http://www.haaretzdaily.com/).
The main idea of mainstream media is to turn a profit and keep their readers entertained. It does not matter what type of news they are receiving, as long it keeps them interested. If you look at the front page of the newspaper, there will always be something for everyone. Whether it’s a sports score, the movie times or a preview for a comic strip there is something to catch the eye of the beholder. One problem with mainstream media is something called framing. Framing forces us to only look at only certain items and block out anything they deem unfit for us to see. This is a big problem because there are many stories out in the world that aren’t brought to our attention because the government believes we wouldn’t b able to handle it. Framing doesn’t exactly tell us what to read but it only supplies what they want us to read. We are still able to go and find all the news we want, but they wont provide it.
Mainstream media has been an essential part of campaigning for quite some time. Candidates have been using radio plug-ins, television commercials, and newspaper ads since they have been around. One of the most famous television campaign ads, Daisy Girl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg), was for Lyndon B. Johnson. It showed a little girl standing in the middle of a meadow, counting pedals on a daisy flower, when all of the sudden we see a mushroom cloud of smoke. This ad was basically saying vote for me or a huge bomb will explode and everyone will die. This is called propaganda.
Propaganda is used for everything from getting you to eat at a certain restaurant to following a leader in creating genocide. It is a form of communication that tries to persuade you to act a certain way. Most propaganda we see today is negative. The ad campaigns usually consist of two parts, the bashing of the contender and the ray of light on the creator of the ad. The ads usually start of with a dark voice and dark music talking about all the faults of an apposing candidate. After the audience is convinced that if this candidate is chosen there will be deathly penalties to pay, that’s when the savior comes in. The light brightens and the music becomes cheerful. You see this g-dly candidate helping kids learn and crossing old ladies across the street, “ this is who I want to run my country” is what people say after seeing this. This negative propaganda doesn’t only affect us; it is seen across the world.
In the end, mainstream media has been our source for the news since as long as I can remember. It has brought us information about our world and keeps us informed of the present events in our world. Even though they sometimes say things we don’t want to hear or tell us things that we disagree with, we will always look to mainstream media as our first source of current event.
In the present day media has become more than just a give-take relationship. Nowadays, everyone is giving and everyone is taking. The media has become more and more accessible to its customers over the years. The major change in media in the past years was the emerging of the Internet. The Internet allowed people to choose whom they heard the news from, what type of news they heard, where they heard the news, and when they heard the news. It seemed to be that this was the beginning of the downfall of mainstream media but what goes up must come down or at least become equal.
The Internet is filled with every perspective of the news from left to right. Instead of just listening to the five o’clock news and thinking that you know everything that going on in our world, the Internet lets you expand your horizons and dig deeper into any news article than ever before. The Internet was first looked at as a great way to share your thoughts and opinions with the world. People didn’t realize how dangerous this movement really was. Blogging basically became a non-verbal way of propaganda. Instead of speaking, blogs offered much more. It offered video, more than just one person’s opinion, and all the information that one could think of on that certain topic. It was an easier way or persuasion because all the person had to do was click.
Gillmore writes that this new media has an effect on three types of people, journalists, newsmakers, and the audience. Robert Schwartz wrote on his blog about this topic,

“He (Gillmore) feels journalists should get with the times and start using the Internet to tell some of the news. The Internet has changed the way newsmakers make news. They are able to spread the world almost twice as fast and twice as efficient on the Internet than on paper.
Gillmore says how the former audience, that’s used to just receiving the news, should do more than just take in the information. They should cherish this new way of media and give their input, like he says, ‘They must be active users of news, and not mere consumers.’ We should not only take the news, but make the news. If we don’t use this new media to its full advantage then there really is no use to have it.”

Audience plays the biggest role out of the three because without the audience you’re preaching but no one is listening. Audience should be more involved in the media because they are the one’s it effects. Audience can take control of their political world if they just stepped up and took over.
There are some negative aspects to blogging. One item that is a problem is authorship. When people blog, they write down their feelings and opinions of the subject matter but what if someone else shares your views on a different blog on a another website? Who becomes known as the creator? One solution is that we can look at the time stamp of when each blog was posted and give the rights to the faster blogger, first come first served. A way to make this, in a sense,
easier is to make a system that filters your blog and checks if what you wrote was done anywhere else. This way there will be no way of plagiarizing unless it’s by choice.

Another problem is a thing called trolling. Trolling is when a blogger rants and raves about negative views and says close to idiotic things, which triggers people to respond. This forces the blog become long and pointless and in the aftermath people stop posting on the blog. Trolls tend to hind their identity or give multiple names so they can’t be hunted down and influenced to stop. This fad of trolling, though fun, is illegal. This is the exact wording for the law,

"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

This law was necessary in order to shut down trolls. They ruin what blogging is all about and destroy the fun of opinion.
Mainstream media and new media have had a little bit of a strong-arm competition throughout the past couple of years. They both have the same objective and when this happens we get war. At first mainstream media was the main source of news and current events but the down side was you either needed to set a certain time to watch or hear it, or you needed to carry a paper around with you all day. Plus, if you missed the news or couldn’t buy a paper, you didn’t know what was happening in the world for that day. On top of all that, MSM told you what to watch and what was important. People were mad as hell and they weren’t gonna take it anymore. New media was the solution to all those problems. It allowed you to choose your own news and when you saw it. It looked like the end of the news for mainstream media. Mainstream media realized what was happening and they got with the Internet age. All the major news sources created web pages on the Internet. This created serenity for the public especially they were able to read the news on all different major web sites. Reuters Editor Political and General News Paul Holmes said,
“No news organization in the history of the media has had a monopoly on the truth. What is different today is that there are many different voices.”
The public now had everything they needed plus some they didn’t even know they wanted.
Media have evolved enormously since the beginning. Media started from handing out newspapers on street corners and ended up on everyones desk at the click of a finger. Everyone has his or her own opinion of what is right and what is wrong. They write these thoughts in media and spread their ideas throughout the world. Media is how we live and how we see other people live.

“Napoleon famously said that the tools belong to the man who can use them, and that's the story here, too: Tools, by themselves, don't provide freedom. They have to be used, by people.”

This sentence I feel sums up the whole page. It tells us that the Internet is our freedom to the extent that we push it. When we give into pressure and are strong-armed into submission is when the Internet is controlled. France got Yahoo! to stop selling Nazi memorabilia. We have freedom of speech on the internet to a certain extent, it depends on what you are blogging on. Blogging about a video game will be in different style then blogging about the politics in Iraq.
Sometimes our freedom of speech should be kept within a group of friends and not publicly announced. I am trying to tie in that this week there will be a rally held about the denial of the holocaust, again. Why can’t they just take it? Is it because they feel that bad about it that they can’t live with themselves if it really did happen? Probably not! They are in belief that history didn’t happen. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Also, I don’t understand why they need a rally against it. What exactly is there objective? I’m serious! I would really like to know. This blogger is looking for an answer. Please help. I know a lot of people won’t read this but if you do, please give me some information. I will also look up on it and post some of their propaganda. Just because they deny history doesn’t mean its changed.

an amazing video

every one needs to watch this. i found it on buzzline.com
http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=335844850

Gillmore

Chapter 12

In this chapter, gillmore talks about the past, present, and future of media. He talks about how media, in a sense, caused history to change as it did. He talks about how painting was the first from of expression. The printing press was the biggest change in media history. It gave people the opportunity to express themselves freely and without screening of what they think. After the printing press came the Internet. This allows not only professionals, but everybody, to write what they think and post it on the net for others to see. What most of these people wrote about was the news. Everyone gave their opinion and everyone was a critic just b/c everyone had the option to do so. Of course some opinions are more important than others.
Gillmore’s main focus of the book was to show that this new type of media has an effect on 3 types of people: journalists, newsmakers, and the audience.
He feels journalists should get with the times and start using the Internet to tell some of the news. Also, big media should look at some of the more popular blogs and maybe see what they have to say instead of force-feeding the news to the public and with not accepting anything in return.
The Internet has changed the way newsmakers make news. They are able to spread the world almost twice as fast and twice as efficient on the Internet than on paper. A candidate running for president will have a web page before he puts out all of his information in the newspaper. Gillmore also pokes at how few things are kept secret nowadays because of the Internet. We have sites and blogs that leak those secrets out, like Secrecy News. This new form of media has its down sides. One is that the credibility of a story can become a mystery. Gillmore thinks that it wont be a problem if they act professionally.
Gillmore says how the former audience, that’s used to just receiving the news, should do more than just take in the information. They should cherish this new way of media and give their input, like he says, “they must be active users of news, and not mere consumers.” We should not only take the news, but make the news. If we don’t use this new media to its full advantage then there really is no use to have it. Gillmore points out how the government isn’t a big fan of the Internet. Internet users feel that some stories are not covered properly so they write their own opinion. The government doesn’t have any control of what is written, and because of this they want to make harsh restrictions that will control our freedom of speech. In the end gillmore feels that the internet will win. The government will start to recognize everybody instead of just the people that pay their bills.
In the last part of this chapter Gillmore speaks about copyright. He says, “I value copyright. I loathe its abuse.” He thinks that you should be able to use copyrighted items for creative use. He thinks there should be a creative copyright law. This will allow people to keep copyrighted what they want, while allowing people to expand on their ideas. His book is on the internet because he want to see what people will do with his book. He wants people to add to it, whether positively or negatively. He wants his book to be spread and viewed without the person being scared of being prosecuted with the laws of copyright.
Lastly he talks about how everyday things change. He wants these changes, and the opinions on these changes, to be posted on his website. He says we can all make the news, no matter how big or small, and in gillmore’s words “ let’s get started.”

this is only a test

just wanted to check if my time stamp was on target.

A citizen in our midst

Once in a while someone says something on the radio or television that shocks people by saying “I can’t believe he just said that”. This week it was a radio host named Jerry Klein. Jerry started his radio show with the statement “All Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band.” You can imagine how things escaladed from there. The phone lines were ringing off the hook and people were calling in agreeing and disagreeing with what Jerry has said. After things got a little out of hand he admitted it was all a hoax. He wanted ask a question that would provoke uncommon answers to the attack of 9/11. The only problem is he got more than he could chew. People were basically saying its time to put the Muslims through the holocaust.
I think that what Jerry did was wrong. This was an unprofessional way to use media to ask a simple question that could have been asked strait out. He didn’t need to make the statement that he did, he could have just put the question out there and let the listeners do the rest. Media is a very sensitive thing. One wrong question or idea could cause havoc for some people. The listeners that agreed with what Jerry said believed in it to the extent of either shipping them all out of America or, like I said before, and Islamic holocaust.
Personally I think that Muslims/ Islamic people contribute enough to society to look at them as one of our own. For the first time we have an Islamic member on our senate. As a Jewish person I feel that I should have some compassion for these people. They suffer being a minority that, in these times, is looked down upon and labeled as dangerous. The media showed how they are dangerous by branding them with the 9/11 attacks. In fact, it is only a low percentage of Muslims that actually believe in what happened that day. Most of them need to live in fear now because of what their country has done. They are our next-door neighbors, our co-workers, and our taxi drivers (just kidding) but I think that’s all they should be seen as. They should be seen as another person trying to live his or her life in the land of opportunity.

polls on our leaders

I signed on to my AOL account this afternoon, thinking what am I going to write about for tomorrow, when it hit me in the face like a sack of potatoes. There is a poll on AOL to see who is the most liked person in politics (http://news.aol.com/dailypulse/112806/_a/whos-the-least-likable/20061128103409990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001). The list ranges from former presidents to Hillary Clinton. They have all types of fun polls on this site. One poll that just made me laugh was to see who was the most liked and who was the least. Drum roll please….. the most liked is Bill Clinton and the least liked is, you got it, the president himself, George Bush. I feel that these polls are a type of framing. They give us only certain people to choose from and they show us who the world think s is good and who is bad.
Who is taking these polls? They say the world but really it could be anybody. They could have paid people to vote for certain people to put them at the top of the list. When we see the results we start acting with hindsight bias and tell our selves that “ Ya! I knew Bill is the best; he was great as our president. Bush does nothing for this country and if I saw him I might spit on his shoe.”
I don’t think its fair to compare all of these political leaders together. Some are out of touch and some we see everyday. I don’t think our opinions on an AOL poll will change the way the nation sees these people, but it could distort it a little bit. In the end, this poll will not make it or break it for these leaders. It won’t change the world and it wont change the opinion of the nation.