Getting the News in 160 Characters or Less

In this day and age news travels fast. Thanks again for that one, technology! It seems that no matter where you turn the hot issues of today are glaring you in the face. On your e-mail’s homepage, the front page of the news paper and the top story on your favorite news station. Sometimes, you don’t even need to look to those things to get your information. A lot of things I find out about are via the ever popular Facebook. Oh, and let us not forget the trending topics on twitter. 

I was eleven years old on September 11th, 2001. I distinctly remember watching the first tower burning on the news that morning. I remember going to school and my friend asking why all of the teachers were freaking out. “A plane hit a building in New York,” I told him. To which he told others. When we sat in class that day we asked our teacher if we could watch the news. He took a moment before deciding that we could and called the other 6th grade teachers and asked them to bring those kids into the classroom and we would all watch together. All day the 50 or so 6th graders sat in a room on the floor with the lights off watching the media coverage. It’s what my family watched when I got home. We were glued to the TV for a long time and that’s exactly how that news came. Person to person and through the news station.

I was eighteen on November 4th, 2008. I was in my women’s history class at AVC. My friend and I were anxiously waiting the results of the presidential election, which I’d voted in early that morning. Finally, during our break we left our class early. I dropped her off at her home and started driving home. Half way there, my phone rang and I read the text message, “Obama wins!” I watched the coverage the rest of the night, now awaiting the results of Proposition 8. I went to bed before those results and woke up the next morning with the news station on but still no results. Finally, I went online to see that it had passed. Full of disbelief, I kept searching the sites and checked back again that night after work. After several of my “trusted” sites and finally the news stories on it, I could believe it. 

I learned of the death of pop icon Michael Jackson through a text message, the resignation of Rahm Emmanuel from twitter, the repeal of Prop 8 on Yahoo. While this is the way that I learned of news, this isn’t the way that I confirm the news. I check over and over again, watch several news programs, check the news papers and read online articles before I can decide what is real and what isn’t. I find that in general I can still with a few reliable sources and somewhat ignore the others. But in these times we need to be careful of simply believing what we read. Not only is there a large amount of bias but sometimes I feel that these sources steal from each other and facts get misinterpreted. While it is good to be informed, it’s better to be properly informed. 

Hate speech in the Media

I’m sure that we’ve all experienced in some way someone hating you for something you could not control. Perhaps you are a woman with some authority over a man in the work place, or you are a person of color in a town that is predominantly white. These day to day life experiences are already hard to deal with without the media continuing to bring these ideas into our mind. 

Often things like movies, television, books and music tell stories of such hardships. Fortunately enough, for the most part it seems that you can find the affects of prejudicial language can go each way in the media. For example, a movie like The Hurt Locker can bring about fear towards arabs and spark the interest of racial slurs against them. The movie G.I. Jane, however, can bring up the idea that women can do something as good, or even better than men.

It does seem to me that more often than not we find the more negative effects of it. Rap lyrics for example, seem to have a lot of this. There are the rappers that talk about how women are unfaithful liars, use the n-word constantly, talk about how the white man puts them down. I’m a fan of rap music, but in general, not this kind. Yet, there it is, played on the radio at least once every two hours because it’s a big hit. Which begs to ask, who is listening to this? And what ideas are they getting about people from it? 

The most viral place for hate speech in media however, is probably the internet. I only say this because of how quickly things get posted around and because everyone has access to post anything they want about it. You can see it in almost everything, even right down to news articles. My e-mail account is with Yahoo, so I get YahooNews. When I read an article about something that President Obama has said or done it somehow turns into how he is a black man. The article may be talking about the new White House dog, but the people writing comments below call him a “socialist nigger who should be shot.” The article might be talking about how the repeal of Proposition 8 is progressing in court, but the people in the comments are talking about how “those faggots should burn in hell.” It’s hateful, and it isn’t simply in people’s minds anymore. It’s in a forum online where hundreds of millions of people can access it and read it. 

So yes, media plays a huge part in the way that hateful speech is being used or promoted and I think this mostly has to do with the fact that it isn’t just a small group of people controlling the media any longer, it is anyone and everyone. While the drama of such language makes for great entertainment, there is a fine line that I think we’re often crossing over. It’s something we as a society have to work against so that our already diverse country can somehow carry on in peace. 

Finding happiness in self-respect.

Self-respect. The knowledge of one's own worth, valuing one's self; pride

Happiness. state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy 

It’s really funny to me, after having read the definitions to each of these terms, that you can have one without the other. Before I read them, if someone had asked me which was more important, I’m pretty sure I would have said that you cannot possibly have one without the other. And the concept of happiness and self respect is something I struggle with so much. 

My mother raised me to be a strong woman. She raised me to be independent and to know my own worth as a person, to not depend on anyone. She taught me to especially never depend on a man. So to me, self-respect is the most important thing. I’m sure you know that saying, “You have to love yourself before anyone else can love you.” I live by that. I don’t take things lying down, I never let people walk all over me. I used to, but then I learned to love myself and respect myself. I respect myself more than I respect almost anyone else. And I am a happy person. Before today, I thought I was a happy person because I respected myself. After thinking about it for a while though, I realized that while it’s good that I respect myself, it isn’t what makes me happy. 

I have a friend who has some serious self-respect issues. She has some abandonment issues due to some family problems and unfortunately it’s carried out into her adult life. She’s chosen someone to love who does not respect her. She does everything for this guy and within the first 6 months of being in a serious relationship with her he cheated on her with her best friend. And she stayed with him. Everything in my body at that time told me to scream at her, that if she had even an ounce of self respect in her body that she would leave him and never speak to him again. She didn’t. She stayed with him and to this day (three years later), although he constantly disrespects her and makes her feel awful, she stays with him. When I ask her why she stays with him after every midnight phone call I get with her crying about how mean he’s been, she replies to me, “Because he makes me happy.” If you were to ask her this question, she would say happiness is more important. 

This brings me back to the definition of happiness. Everyone’s idea of what happiness is will be different. My idea of happiness is loving myself and being surrounded by people who love me. While my boyfriend may bring me happiness, he isn’t the only this that determines my happiness. In general, I think people will always at one time or another find happiness. But I don’t think that everyone will find self-respect, which makes it more important. However, the goal should really be to have both because when you have both, I think anything is possible. 

Willingness To Be Disturbed

At this point in my life I find that I’m very into politics and religion. I care a lot about what I believe in. I’m too passionate, in fact. At times I think that I become blind to the other side and believe there is really only one way. But I’m trying to get over these biases I have because I realize now that no matter what I believe in politically or religiously this shouldn’t get in the way of friendships that could form. That said, it took me some conversations to figure this out.

When you’re young you don’t think twice about what other people may believe in. I always assumed that yes, maybe people believed in God, but as I grew older I started to assume everyone had figured out what I had figured out about it. It wasn’t until about my senior year of high school that I started to see these differences. In fact, there was one defining moment of realizing how differently our views were. There was a party at my house maybe a year ago, and we were playing a game. You write the name of a famous person and tape it to someone else’s forehead and they have to figure out who they are (if you’ve ever seen Inglourious Basters, it was the game that was played in the bar scene). My friend, Alex, was given “Jesus”. His first question was “Am I real?” To which there was mixed answers. After a moment of arguing with each other we settled on “It depends on who you talk to.” 

In my college prep class, freshman year of high school, we had a debate for gay marriage. This is an issue I stand by to the point where I can’t even listen to the other side’s thoughts on it. To me, gay marriage is not harmful. In fact, I think it can boost our economy. Marriage isn’t sacred between men and women anymore, especially with a divorce rate of 50%. I think people should love whoever they love and that others should remember that our country is built on the idea of separation of church and state. I have friends who think differently. To them, the bible clearly states that homosexuality is wrong. And while I’ve heard this view point over and over again, it’s the one conversation that I can’t understand the view point of. 

This brings me to Wheatly’s essay. She says that we enter conversation with a “willingness to be disturbed” but I find that when I have this particular conversation with people, I don’t have a willingness to be disturbed. I don’t even want to have the conversation at all because to me, it leads no where. I think with this issue in particular it is hard for either side to really understand the points of view from the other. On the one hand, the whole point of even talking about it is to perhaps see some insight from another walk of life but at the same time if you start to change your mind about it and be persuaded by them you’re compromising your faith or beliefs. 

After reading this essay I would like to say that the way I have the conversation about gay marriage with those who do not believe in it would change, but I don’t know that I’m telling the truth. In the end, that is probably something I’ll need to work on for myself so maybe the other party can try to understand me as well. Conversation is tricky and while we should go into it with the willingness to be disturbed and have our views challenged, it is easier said than done. 

Past, Present, Women, and Men.

Sometimes, especially when you’re a twenty year old in today’s day and age, it is difficult to understand just how much things change. That’s a really obvious statement isn’t it? Life is constant. But when I think about change I think of it in such short periods of time. I think about how there were days when I didn’t have my BlackBerry at my side twenty-four/seven. I think about how my mom used to be so afraid of the internet in the 90’s that she refused to have the computer in the house. It’s so funny how she has her own Facebook account now. 

I’m aware that things change. But I wasn’t aware of exactly how these changes have affected our media. I took two articles from People Magazine. The first one is from an issue on March 25, 1974. It’s about Cher and Sonny’s divorce (http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20063893,00.html). The second one is from last month, August 30, 2010. That one is about Tiger Wood’s divorce (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20415582,00.html). 

The first thing I noticed was that the article about Cher was long. It also told of the issue and date that the article was released. Also, the article was set up more dramatic. The author of it described the place where he interviewed her, the way she wasn’t wearing her make up and that her fingernails were long and purple. Along with this more dramatic language, the article is mostly quotes from Cher rather than the author reporting on what she said. As a reader, the article made me feel some what sorry for her. The article gave the tone of remorse that it didn’t work out between them. Even though there was a hint at her relationship with another man I never got the feeling that people at that time thought of her as a home wrecker or a cheater.

Tiger Woods’ article does not give me the same feeling of remorse, even though he is quoted as saying he was sad about it. There are a few reasons why I think this as well. First of all, this article is significantly shorter. This may have to do with the fact that it probably wasn’t actually published in their magazine (there is no volume number). The Tiger Woods scandal was all over the news for quite some time, with mistresses coming out left and right so nothing about this divorce was shocking as it may have been for Sonny and Cher. The story also focused more on what Tiger had said rather than setting up the scene of what he looked like when he said it. With Cher, you can see her sitting at a table with the reporter having in dept conversation about it, but with Tiger it feels as if People Magazine just took some quotes here and there from places where they may have heard him talk about his divorce. 

I think this may have something to do with the way people view men and women in divorce. Often, people assume it is the mans fault that someone divorces. Perhaps in the case of Sonny and Cher (though I have no idea as I was born 16 years later) even if she was cheating there was probably a reason - she was unhappy, he was much older than her and maybe she wasn’t as ready as she was to be tied down. Even though there were hints about her being with someone else, it was never brought against her in the article. But in Tiger’s case, being that he is a man, he must be a sexist pig who just uses women. If he hadn’t been such a horrible cheating lying scumbag of a husband, they wouldn’t have divorced, and even the reporters won’t let it go. It’s just one of those double standards that we see with men and women and the way that people treat them. 

English Is A Challenge

English is my first, and only, language. I took Spanish in high school, my junior and senior year. My Spanish II teacher was hardcore. She spoke English, Spanish and French. She taught all of these too, even to the AP level. And her classes were hard. The homework was hard, the tests were hard, remembering the “yo, tu, usted, nosotros” forms were hard. I was not the only one that saw this either. Every pop quiz came with protests from my classmates and groans followed behind every homework assignment she wrote on the board. 

Finally, she was sick of our complaining. She sat down on a desk in front of the class and told us, “This is not hard. You are making it hard. English, the language you guys speak is hard.” She explained to us that Spanish, along with many other foreign languages, has a set list of rules. For the most part verbs end the same way based on the tense and who you’re talking about. Once you get the rules down (like in math) the only things that change are the words (like the numbers of a problem). English however, has all sorts of crazy rules. “I before E except after C” and there are three different meanings for the words “there, their, and they’re”. She told us that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. 

Which gave us all some perspective on how non-native speakers feel when they come to this country - a country where we primarily speak English. I feel that often they’re looked down upon. Often people ask, “Why can’t they just learn English? They’ve come to OUR country, they should learn OUR language.” While this would probably make life a little easier, I find it ridiculous that in a country that has no official language and is considered to be the melting pot of countries that we would say this. 

There is no doubting that English has become a very globalized and important language. According to an essay by Mauro E. Mujica (pg. 168 in EL), 66,000 people from 50 different countries were asked if they thought that you needed to know English in order to be successful. Ninety percent or more of the people surveyed in countries like India, China, and Japan, answered yes. Which comes at no surprise considering that America is known as a superpower in terms of countries. 

People come here for a better chance at life. But is the better chance at life really worth the risk of losing your language simply to conform? Is it worth not being able to read signs posted in your workplace or being able to properly communicate with doctors when your health is in trouble? Imagine if you have a severe allergy to something and you go off to visit Japan. Except you can’t read the label on the packaging because it isn’t in your language. Now you’ve eaten it and broken out in hives and are getting sicker and sicker. And what does the rest of the country say? "Oh, you should have learned Japanese.”

Having English be such a prominent language has to be difficult for non-speakers. I think it's something we as speakers don't really think about. There's such an expectation for everyone to know what we're saying that at times we don't think to accommodate them and at other times it is just too difficult to accommodate them. I feel like other cultures are trying to be more English proficient but there's no denying it - English is a difficult language to learn.

Two sides to EVERY story.

Often the media twists things around to push a political agenda. In turn, one event can be retold several ways. It is kind of like that game “telephone”. There is one person that saw it one way and then told someone else and that person told someone else until the whole thing doesn’t even sound right anymore. The problem with the news media is that the people who watch it tend to hear something and take it as fact just to spew it out again. Let’s take for example Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally. For this, I took two internet articles from two news companies - CNN and Fox. Traditionally, people think that CNN is liberal and that Fox is conservative. Then there are those that argue that one or the other is “fair” and “balanced”. 

Whatever you believe, here are the two articles:

CNN - http://articles.cnn.com/2010-08-30/politics/glenn.beck.rally.monday_1_conservative-commentator-glenn-beck-rally-king-anniversary?_s=PM:POLITICS

Fox - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/28/thousands-expected-glenn-beck-rally-civil-rights-leaders-protest-event/

If you happened to be following this story at the time there was a huge controversy over how many people actually showed up to Beck’s rally. People estimated that there were tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Fox’s article simply states “tens of thousands” showed up, while CNN devoted several paragraphs to cover the controversy of the actual numbers. Also, if you’ll note, CNN’s article was much longer and hit on many points. Not all of which were important to the event. They touch on how Glenn Beck said some very criticizing things about Obama, and touched on the idea of a Glenn-Palin campaign for 2012. 

Both articles also touch on Al Sharpton’s thoughts of the rally. Sharpton lead his own demonstration, saying that Beck was being insensitive for having the rally on the same day and at the same place as Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have A Dream” speech.  While Beck urged that the rally was not political, Sharpton seemed to attempt to turn it into that. It seemed to me though that Fox turned Sharpton into the cynical villain who tried to crash Beck’s rally. On the other end, CNN does the same thing with Beck. They say that he seems to be trying to become some sort of religious movement leader, teaming up with Evangelicals, but the criticizing him for being Mormon. If you can’t tell, this is where I get the idea that the two companies are a little more one sided than they want to let on.

For the most part however, both CNN and Fox’s viewpoints on the situation seem to be the same. They both note that the rally was meant to be religious, not political. They also seem to cite the same things - the presence of Sarah Palin, the input of Al Sharpton, the date and place being the same as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and that there was a large amount of people attending. The main difference seems to be the writing style. CNN seemed to be all over the place, pulling old information and bringing it into something it didn’t have a lot to do with. Fox, while it stayed on track, seemed to me that they were more over trying to glorify Beck than simply report on the rally. Which makes sense, since the guy works for your network and brings in amazing ratings. 

I suppose that there are always two sides to the story and that overall we should be doing a lot of research before we take anything as fact. 

(Blog Wk 4, Pg. 140, Prompt 2)