As seen by my first few posts, I haven't decided on a specific theme for the blog.In my first few posts I discussed the effects that our advancements in communication has had on the way we report the news, and more importantly, how THAT has had an effect on how we view history. The speed in which stories are produced, covered and then left in the past doesn't leave much room for context, which is needed to view events that are currently happening or have already happened somewhat objectively. In conjunction with this, I am going to highlight the manner of news coverage based on the audiences that they mostly cater to. It is of great interest to me, just like the reading earlier this semester, which suggested that as the largest demographic in the US changes over the next few decades, the kinds of news that we see will also begin to change.

At the speed of print

This semester we have acknowledged in more ways than one, that the way we communicate has effected the way news is brought to us, and the amount of people that see it. I think that there is no better example of this phenomenon then the Texas student who was sent away out of fear of bringing a bomb to school. The story broke on September 16th. In a matter of hours, both President Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg responded encouragingly to the story, reassuring Ahmed Mohamed that he had their support. Everyone in the country began tweeting about it, retweeting it, sharing it on Facebook, as well as maybe finding it in the newspaper. Just 5 days later, Ahmed has been invited, and is going, to space camp,  and the story seems to have been resolved. I  couldn't help but notice, that since I've been informed on the perspective of the speed of national interest, the story was introduced, reached the climax of national interest, and has died down faster than I realized it could. It goes without saying that without the internet, we would probably be getting the details today, instead of hours after it happened. That's why this serves as the best case study for what we've been discussing so far.

Former inmates: Incarceration makes economic stability nearly impossible for our families http://flip.it/S1Ehw

Beginning observations

As I've been learning throughout the semester, there are various ways in which the media chooses to distribute it's information to us. One of the things that I have noticed is the collective perspective that articles and news stories take over time. What I mean is, each time a newsworthy event happens, some one reports it, and there's a story. Usually, stories are written so that you get the gist of what has happened as quickly as possible. But based on the idea of fragmented bias, if you were to put all of the articles of a certain story together over time, how much information would be missing? I think that this sort of bias transcends the news sphere and affects the way we look at history, and even the way we learn. When politicians cite historical events in their arguments, they use the events themselves to their advantage, despite whatever context caused that event to happen. Of course, I would never expect a politician to do otherwise, and so should no one else. But when large numbers of people believe everything that is told to them, word for word, for over 30 years, it sort of becomes a  "paper truth," until the truth is uncovered through research. So when people bring up the police brutality issues, and the responses are mostly statistics and trends(i.e. black on black crimes, poverty, the usual stuff), no one considers the context, or *why those things were that way at that time* People use these responses as isolated incidents, with the expectation that these retorts are good enough to end any argument of the opposite persuasion. Furthermore, the same people that do this use context to defend their arguments, which is I guess as expected of them. I understand that it's unrealistic to expect people all over the country  to put forth the effort to find their own facts. But when it gets bad enough that it spreads from media, to education, to everyday living, that's when it becomes a problem.