What would you change about newscast?

This particular newscast was discussing the potential of Bonny Eagle High Schools football team this year. They have won the last 4 out of 5 class A state championships which is the most in school history. The actual reporting was mediocre at best, and the statistics were relatively vague. The only mentioned the fact that they had won last years state championships instead of recognizing that they had won the last four. Which is a record for a class A High school football in the state of Maine. Also, they seemed to focus on Portland and Windham high school more than they did the former state champs. Now, i might be writing with a slight amount of bias because this was my high school team, but regardless it takes talent and good coaching to repeat state championships and they deserve the recognition that these local portland networks aren't giving them. Also, the reporters seemed too scripted, they almost appeared to be reading straight of the teleprompter with no added personal dialogue. If I had control over the newscast I would have put much more emphasis on the defending champs and they're plan of attack this year. It would be a more attractive details to those watching and others teams may even use all the attention they're getting to their own benefit. However, given the fact that it is only one newscast that would be relatively doubtful. Either way it wasn't a terrible broadcast, but it certainly wasn't how i would have gone about it.

Evaluation of how reporters write to their story...

This particular article was about John McCain's unexpected decision to run for office with Sarah Palin. Now, given the topic of discussion it was relatively difficult to dissect the true narration in comparison with the video. Most of the clips were of the two senators attending public meetings while others were simply the news reporter themselves talking at the camera or “to the people”. Because of the historical significance this combination would have made, I might have added some statistical information regarding the fact that no woman had ever been elected to be vice president or president. The campaigns alone were historically relevant. I'm not sure if a woman has run for either office in the past myself, but I do know that I would have discussed the rarity of that detail. This article was relatively short and it was a special report by CNN immediately after McCain announced it. Still, there was some narration used to help explain Sarah Palin's political history and McCain's interview after announcing he had chosen her. Personally, I would have gone more in depth with Sarah Palin's political history. Also, in this particular report they seemed to repeat the same information a little bit more than necessary. For example, they continued to stress the fact that this was so unexpected. Which is understandable because this is regarding our future leaders of the country, however to the extent that they used it it seemed to almost be distracting in terms of actually taking in all of the information that is being conveyed. I began to almost just focus on how many times they said unexpected rather than listening to the details of the report. Overall, the report wasn't terrible, however the relevance of the story was certainly the more attractive detail.

Response to muted newscast

The particular newscast I selected was about a tiger who managed to escape the San Fransisco zoo and attacked three people killing one and badly wounding the other two. I listened to the video with audio first to really try and absorb all of the details they verbally projected, then i proceeded to listen to the video on mute. For this particular report they used many subtitles to assist in delivering the newscast, however as the video goes along it is very evident that you miss out on crucial details to the story. For example, at one point they show a clip of a tiger being fed raw meat in its domestic cage and as that is shown they discuss the age of the tiger and where it had come from. Later in the video they show a loop of the same exact clip except this time a reporter is explaining how almost a year to date prior, this particular tiger showed a vast amount of aggression by attacking its trainer in a public display. After watching it the second time with no audio it almost seemed as though I missed out on about seventy five percent of the story. While it is relatively easy to grasp the overall report due to their occasional subtitles, it really goes to show how crucial the audio is, at least for this particular network. The basic understandings that i got from the muted video was that a tiger had escaped and killed a man, nobody knows how it escaped, and the police eventually had to shoot it dead before it attacked anyone else. When watched with the audio you learn that not only did the tiger kill a man, but he also wounded two others, had a history of being aggressive, was named Tatiyana, and was transferred from the Denver zoo. Now, while all of these details may not necessarily be needed to fully grasp the overall story, it can help people to understand the situation more and even accumulate their own opinion better. Overall, the story was still easily conveyed, however their could have been a lot more done to help visually explain what happened as well.

Critique of a contemporary news article

The particular article I have chosen to evaluate covers the topic of the death penalty. It is titled “The Death Penalty-American Attitudes”. The article evaluates many different American views on the legitimacy of the death penalty and provides plenty of statistical data to help support the claims. The writer consistently uses attribution throughout his article citing many different sources and crediting many external studies. All of the sources are named and properly cited so the use of anonymous attribution is out of the question. Based on the style and manner this person has written their article it was very difficult to detect any sort of legitimate bias. For the most part it was very well written and evaluated both sides of the argument without noticeably favoring one side. The writer explained different positions and stances on the death penalty by simply showing how the public felt based on surveys.
I Terms of balance, this particular writer seemed to focus a little bit more on those who opposed the death penalty rather than those for it. While the majority of the public (57%) were in favor of the death penalty and the belief of an eye for an eye, he seemed to have more to say about those who opposed the death penalty and their reasoning behind their views. I did not see any significant signs of objectivity in this article, for the most part, the writer took a neutral stance regardless of of who he used as a source. By this, of course, I mean he didn't add any noticeable personalized comments about these sources, he simply explained their position and compared the opposing view. The Article also incorporates that of human interest by mentioning previous cases or people on death row that many would recognize such as, Timothy Mcveigh's bombing etc.
Overall, the article in my opinion, was very well written and incorporated many different components that were provided throughout chapter 2.

Convergence and Consolidation in Journalism

Since the exposure of the Internet there have been many technological advances. One in particular, is the ability to relay news straight to your home computer without the burden of waiting to see the news reported on television. Another capability Internet media has provided is the ability to be selective of the news you want to read. For example if you are watching Fox news, you have to observe all the reports in the order that they choose to broadcast it, regardless of your preference. With the Internet it works like the newspaper however, the newspaper is not immediately updated or as quickly updated as the Internet can be. This is another very huge advancement in media journalism. The ability to relay the news as soon as possible once as it has been verified as legitimate to the people is one of the largest benefits to on line journalism. Which brings me to convergence journalism. It is simply the most common reference for on line news, multimedia journalism, digital news, etc. In other words, when broken down into simplified terms it is referred to as electronic content delivery.
A classic example of convergence in todays media was the merger of AOL and Time Warner. Being a content company, Time warner merging with an on line delivery company such as AOL, not only provided as a perfect example of convergence, but they became one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. This however, began to create some confusion for they had such a vast amount of success, many other companies began to converge creating what is now known as media consolidation. The term media consolidation refers to the majority of these media outlets being owned by a small number of corporation i.e. Time Warner solely linked with AOL. Media consolidation helps to characterize ownership structure of these major media industries and has become one of the more widespread approaches to on line media today.

Journalism Resume

Patrick Michael Avery ( I couldn't figure out how to get the web site link)

Contact Information

Patrick Avery

12 Royal Pine Drive

Steep Falls, Maine

(207) 642-5491

Patrick.avery@umit.maine.edu


About Me


I am currently a journalism major at the University of maine. I was born in Los Angeles, California but moved up to maine at the age of three for family reasons. I have wanted to become a screenwriter/ director since my eighth grade term in middle school. However, since becoming a student at the University of Maine the idea of Journalism has tweaked my interests slightly. I'm currently a junior and am looking to take my journalism career with me back to California where I can hopefully incorporate my writing skills learned through journalism with screenwriter in an abstract way.

Journalism Experience

• Took Journalism Senior year in High School

• Was in Honors English throughout High School

• Wrote two articles for the school Newspaper


Personal Skills

• Think of myself as a good writer

• Not afraid to ask questions

• Not afraid to find answers

• Enjoy writing

Three Media Law Issues

The three media law issues I have chosen to discuss regard Censorship, Libel, and the Shield law. Of the three media law issues, Libel seems to obtain most of the attention in today's media. It has been an area of concern in journalism throughout its exsistence and thanks to a supreme court ruling in 1964 it has become even more problematic for those who fall victim to this. Clearly libel, which are legal claims for false statements of fact about a person, can be damaging to anyone who encounters it. However, it is not like libel is the number one option for journalists when they first hear a report. Consideration is taken in this day and age for the sake of accurate reporting, atleast in most cases. The fact that journalists have more freedom due to the 1964 ruling doesnt help in the prevention of its use either
Another common issue in journalism today is media censorship. While some forms of censorship seem only neccessary for the protection of our children and our nation, one major issue is the beleif that the government can regulate and control what news is and isn't reported. If this truly is the case, and there are seemingly unavoidable points that this could be, it can prove to be harmful to a society more than beneficial. Withholding information from the public not only creates grounds for conspiracy theorists but it can also create a feeling of distrust by the public.
The Final media law issue choosen was the shield law. Like the discussion we had in class friday, the shield law seems deemably situational. If you give someone your word, it your obligation as a person on a moral level to respect that. For example, if someone gives you information at the expensive of nto naming your source, would you leave that source nameless if it meant more recognition and profit for you personally? It is a difficult issue and it boils down to your integrity as a reporter and what you beleive provides a better outcome for the people.

Journalism Bias

When discussing particular morale issues in journalism, it is seemingly impossible to avoid that of journalism bias.Whether you consider yourself to be the most objective writer in the world or not, it's hard to beleive that not everyone has incorporated some sort of bias through there writings at one point or another. It has been one of the most consistent and contraversial areas of journalism to this day. So when it comes to my view on the topic of journalism bias, I simply look at it like this, as human beings we are all victims to our own opinion.
Bias is one of the more common characteristics of personalized and opinionated writing. Now, there are certainly many forms of objective writing but, for the writers of such pieces, it is still difficult for the reader to not extract or absorb some sort of opinion through the writers work. Bias is not always a bad thing, especially in terms of persuasive pieces, you want the reader to agree with you and that bias can help you display a strong level of confidence through your writing which many readers could recognize. However, when journalists begin to seperate fact from opinion it can become a very problematic and misleading situation, especially to those reading and interpreting the material. Now, whether the readers interpret opinionated material as fact or opinion is obviously to their disgression, but there has to be some sort of limit to the amount of bias a writer uses for it to be considered "fair" and accurate journalism. For example, One web site attributes journalism bias to the many pressures a journalist faces throughout their career explaining that, " Journalism is a competitive, deadline-driven profession. Reporters compete among themselves for prime space or air time. News organizations compete for market share and reader/viewer attention. And the 24-hour news cycle--driven by the immediacy of television and the internet--creates a situation in which the job of competing never comes to a rest. Add financial pressures to this mix--the general desire of media groups for profit margins that exceed what's "normal" in many other industries--and you create a bias toward information that can be obtained quickly, easily, and inexpensively." (http://rhetorica.net/bias.htm) I don't know if journalism bias is neccessarily the largest morale issue in the world of journalism, to an extent some types of bias seem only natural. Of course, this is all dependant on what the writing regards and what type of journalism we're talking about.
What I can tell you about journalism bias or bias in general is that i find it is almost impossible to beleive that perfectly objective writing has become the norm in our day and age of journalism. I know it's the goal in most cases, but actually reaching that goal seems to have become the real challenge in journalism today.