News At Half Empty

So call me sentimental but during tech week when one suffers from a significant loss of sleep i fight the temptation to be incredibly negative by looking at those heart warming (all be it kind of cheesy) stories the news is so fond of broadcasting. So last monday i went onto MSN news to look for such a tale. I wanted to hear about charity funding a children's hospital or a Man who had run into a burning building to save a baby, anything to make me start thinking the world wasn't an awful cynical place (even if it really is). So I click on the little NEWS tab and what do i see, Palin effigies, Body discovered in search for murdered teacher , college tuition up 6.4 percent , and thousands lack power after northeast storm (ruining halloween!!). I had to do some serious digging before finally finding a video story about a special farm of animals used as a kind of therapy for children with mental disabilities. It made me say "awww" and cheered me up , but why did i have to search so hard for it. Why was the rotting corpse of a murdered woman on the front page but a family builds a farm for special needs children to experience joy from and they get buried at the bottom of the news bin? What is society's obsession with tragedy? what happened to the days of the depression , when people turned to musicals like Oklahoma because of their optimistic views? why battle hard times with more negativity. Why not focus on the good?

The end that justifies the means

One of the major accusations that the media is throwing at the Obama campaign is that he is a "socialist". This scares people because socialism is quite a bit like communism. It's the idea that capitalism gives wealth to only a small fraction of society , leaving the majority with significantly less money and power. 

The thing is, the current system DOES only give money to a small fraction and in the upcoming depression it's not going to work out. But people hear "spread the wealth" and they can only see red. 

It's true that Obama's plan for fiscal reconstruction is not exactly individualistic. He does call for the individual to serve society with the raising of taxes. He also wants more government involvement in health care. The truth is however , we DO need to give to society as a whole if we are going to survive the financial crisis. People don't want to hear it but it IS necessary. As far as health care goes, Obama wants more involvement because he wants more affordable health care for anyone who needs it. Speaking as someone who has had to pay for her own health care out of pocket, I can tell you that this plan is also necessary. Obama wants to spread the wealth and the media and public go into a nervous frenzy , but doesn't it just make sense? Isn't it a flaw in the system that corrupt business owners can own cars that cost more than your house but the single working mother with a five year old son can't afford to take him to the hospital when he is sick? How can the media criticize something so obviously needed in this country, just because it isn't individualistic. Does the "individual" only mean "the elite individual"? The lower class is made up of individuals , it is not some seething mass we call "society".

Technology, no strings attached

In our recent readings we have been informed of the danger that technology (namely internet news feeds and bloggers) poses on journalism.

However , i feel that one positive point being left out is how blogging and some news feeds provide something unprecedented in our system of news :no strings attached. 

There is obviously less revenue when dealing with these things , bloggers (while often unreliable) report news for free. No one is paying these internet journalists and so there is no one to tell them what they can and cannot report. 

As we saw in the documentary on milk hormones , the big names that fund the news stations have a heavy hand in what is and isn't being revealed. They can kill any story that they think will be bad for their business. The corruption of money has seeped into every pore of T.V news programs and newspapers. 

So while you often run into the risk of false information in blogs and free news feeds , you are without the puppet strings of funding. If you find a blogger that proves themselves to be an actually intelligent well informed source of information you can  be pretty sure that no one is going to force them to withhold that information from you or alter it for commercial reasons.

In this way the revenue free news system is beneficial to us as a public. Less censorship will yield better warnings and is the pathway to a more enlightened audience.

Wolves , Poler bears and The second U in Nuclear

I know that the media has been pointing (and laughing ) at Palin lately, but against my every expectation they have actually cut her a break this time.

People are actually proud of her, she managed to get through the debate without putting her entire foot in her mouth, something completely unprecedented in Vice presidential debate history......o wait....

Despite being hailed as an idiot , I can now see the brilliance in Palin's technique. She has built herself up as such a completely incompetent individual that all she has to do to be considered successful is not make a complete fool of herself. Nothing she said was particularly brilliant , but because she didn't fall flat on her face people took her seriously, even called the debate a tie. 

Does anyone else remember how the media raked Bush over the coals for Saying "Nuc-u-lar"? No one even mentioned it when Palin said it...maybe because they were impressed that she actually knew what the war was about. Media crucified Bush for ruining the environmental treaty but when Palin allows the hunting of wolves and tries to keep Poler Bears off of the endangered species list, journalist hardly take notice. Why aren't people enraged? 

Because it's "funny". What we can laugh at doesn't scare us. 

All these SNL skits and classroom jokes make us find her amusing. Another brilliant technique on her account, who can hate someone who is so entertaining. No one thinks of her as a threat when she seems so harmlessly and hilariously stupid. But the future of the country is not so funny. The economy , the war, and the environment are deadly serious matters. If power is put in the wrong hand then we could easily slip into a depression. 

So why is everyone Laughing?