PressEthic

On the New York Times website a heartbreaking story about the sexual abuse of African children was posted today. The issue has an article and a video with beautiful pictures with a voiceover. The video is ten and a half minutes long and includes a series of pictures that coordinate with the voice of the narrator and what is going on in the story. A different person wrote the related article, did the voiceover and took the pictures with is interesting to me from the perspective of immersion journalism. This is not an objective story; the narrator repeats over and over the fact that "it is real violence and should be known by the world." I am fascinated by this photojournalistic storytelling and the video makes it so intriguing.

In the very heated and publicized Bell shooting in Queens CNN.com posted an update today to let America know that one of the wounded said, "My friend is dead. I'm shot up. We need justice." I was expecting the entire article to endlessly drone on and drone about the racial undertones and make condescending comments about the victims and their history but I was surprised when I saw the option to click on a video that presented a different view. The victim's fiance' isn't mad at police and CNN wants to tell you about it in a video. Interesting how this convergence thing is popping up. I can't say the article is bias in terms of promoting this racial element of the shooting.

Barbara Walters recently visited 40/40 Jay-Z's club to interview him. Today she was on her show The View where a sort of condescending tone was taken. Walters said she took her rich friends to "this 40/40 downtown" and snapped her fingers trying to be all "hip-hoppy". She goes on to tell her anecdote and after she says all these wonderful things ends with "you know he used to be a drug dealer." Rosie O'Donnell kind of got annoyed and then Walters covered her tracks by saying what a wonderful man he was and how he rose from the gutter. I don't know the finances of these women, but I do know that Jay-Z sits on a $320 million dollar empire that he cultivated through business practices.

Why do voting blunders keep occurring in Florida where Jeb Bush is conveniently a part of the Elections Canvassing Commission? And why is it that media outlets are not honing in on this obvious fact? It makes it really hard not to think about and consider those extremists who claim the government controls the media. If the entire point of the media is to deliver objective news to the public why do certain facts seem to be ignored or more importantly not investigated? Has our news media become lazy and not willing to challenge facts or is it a reflection of the public's ignorance? The media should serve as a checks and balances for the governments actions but in cases such as this I feel that the media just glosses over it.

In Kentucky a day before Thanksgiving, there were broadcasts on every five o'clock news station from our troops in Iraq. The area of Kentucky where I spent Thanksgiving is a small rural area where people live in the same house their entire lives, where people get married straight out of high school and where a lot of people send their children to join the army. I began to wonder whether residents in larger cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago and Phoenix had to endure continuous laborious broadcasts from the troops in Iraq. The troops looked as though they were reading a script and there wasn't an iota of sincerity in their voices as they repeated over and over how happy they were to be doing their jobs in Iraq. Yeah right. Now that Bush wants to up the efforts in Iraq, places like Kentucky, where people are more likely to run off and join the army, are being saturated with tales of heroism on the holidays. I really lost respect for the new media because of their stereotypical broadcasting and I knew that in other cities it was customary to hear from the troops in Iraq but what I saw in Kentucky was so far from normal. Then on Thanksgiving day I had to hear all day about Bush calling ten troops to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and see the same tired picture of him grinning on the phone from his lazy chair at Camp David. It was advertising for the army like I've never seen. Forget the pop up ads on the internet and commericals on television- this was so blatant I wondered whether the army sponsored the news.

After spending time with four different officers during two different police ride alongs I got a different perspective of police officers in general. I never had much respect for police officers they seemed to cause more trouble than help but after spending time with them I started to feel differently. That sympathy was totally removed after reading that three officers fired their guns fifty something times at three unarmed men. It happened to be one of the victims' wedding day which is why the story has garnered so much attention. Why the police officers are suspended with pay for this act is beyond me.

Michael Jackson performed "We Are the World" for two seconds at the World Music Awards angering critics who thought he was going to be performing "Thriller". It's interesting to me that when journalists cover entertainment stories... even on CNN they always have this negative tone. Not that I care about Jackson's performance in the least but why is caddy journalism tolerated when dealing with celebrities? I am not talking about publications such as US Weekly or television stations like the E! Channel that we expect to present horrible journalism for the shock factor but the CNN.com article was just ridiculous.

CNN.com ran an article today about the fact that the Repulican party had three black candidates running this election and all of them lost. The article accuses the Republican party of trying to tout these black candidates as the new face of the repulican party in order to get more votes. Whether this is true or not is not the issue here. The problem is that the article used pretty loaded terms and phrases that suggest the author's point of view on the issue. The article makes Republicans sound ridiculous for trying to brand 2006 as the year of the black republican- their words not mine. The way the entire article is written it makes fun of the Republicans efforts.

The former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan Samuel H. Bowers died Sunday of a heart attack while serving a life sentence for the 1966 assassination of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. He was convicted in 1998 for a crime committed in 1966 which means he only spent 8 years in prison- hardly justified for what he did. The article on CNN.com as I know is supposed to deliver the hard facts but I think it is pretty relevant to state early on in the article the fact that it took so long for Bowers to even be convicted. In reading the article I was angry because as a journalist delivering hard news our opinions just do not matter.

Former South African President P.W. Botha died on Tuesday and the article on CNN.com is the second about his death. The first article simply eluded to his apartheid past and the fact that he died. The headline today read, "Mandela's Botha Tribute comes with a 'but'". This headline is misleading because after reading the article you realize Mandela said nothing negative about Botha like the headline implies. The headline makes it sound as though Mandela condemmed the former President after his death- which he did not. Many Soutn Africans hate Botha because he partly created the apartheid in South Africa and is responsible for jailing Mandela for 27 years.

Senator John Kerry spoke to a group of students at Pasadena City College yesterday and told them in so many words that they'd better stay in school or they would run the risk of getting stuck in Iraq. (Which is a true statement) President Bush and other republicans are jumping on the bandwagon saying that Kerry's comment was disrespectful to the troops now serving in Iraq. I strongly disagree. Kerry said what most of the troops are saying- no one wants to be in Iraq, the American people do not want our troops there and our troops themselves want to come home.

I'm sure things like this happen all the time; women and children being brutally raped, people being castrated, people using body limbs trophies. War is a disgusting fact and these men who are brave enough or brain-washed enough to put their lives on the line are submitted themselves to irreputable psychological damage. I feel if they are giving their lives the government needs to care about their mental states because that is what leads to disturbing images and possible tainted images of military.

This picture and caption reminds me of the fact that America just like any other country would positions itself in the best light in every situation. This photo and caption gives the underlying picture that these women are somehow at fault because they are eating ice cream and enjoying life while others are perishing 600 miles away. The same could be said for us right here in America as there are homeless people on the street sleeping the cold while we sleep in nice apartments with heat.

On CNN.com there is an article about a Dekalb County (Georgia) nurse who is suing the county because a police officer have her a $100 ticket for having a sticker that read "I'm tired of all the BUSH**". Even though Georgia did used to have a law in its books that prohibited lewd or profane sticker or decals on vehicles this law was deemed unconstitutional in 1990. I'm sure that the police officer knew this and still decided to harass the woman for her difference of opinion regarding President Bush

In Time Magazine's October 23, 2006 issue, Barack Obama is featured on the cover with the headline "Why Barack Obama could be the Next President" written by Joe Klein. After reading the shorter version on CNN.com I began to wonder about some of the issues raised in the article and the manner in which it was written.