Q. How can we ensure that our development as moral and social animals keeps pace with our rapidly evolving communications technology?
A. By playing an active role in our media consumption, trusting reporters who demonstrate fairness and reliability over time, offering corrections when they get something wrong, and when we care enough--reading the original documents they worked from.
Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, an alien researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."Do movie trailers appeal to our 'deep' or 'hyper' attention?
Douglas Adams cult classic may have been the stuff of Science Fiction in the 1970s, but one can't help compare his fictitious guide to existing modern-day technology. Never before have we had access to so much information at our fingertips. So why is it we seem to know so little?
You can see it when you look out your window... when you turn on your television... when you go to work. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. The truth that like everyone else you were born into a prison that you can not smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. More precisely the prison OF your mind.
When journalist Eric Weiner traveled the world to discover what made some countries happier places than others, he found one primary common denominator among the happiest. The essential ingredient was trust. The happiest countries are those in which people feel they can trust their government, trust social institutions, and trust their neighbors (see The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner).
Trust should be easy. We do it every day. We trust the other drivers on the road to stop when their light turns red. We trust that the author, reporter, expert and correspondent whose work we read is giving us truth about the world as it is, and how it's likely to be. We relax in that trust and feel informed...that is, until a fact checker comes along who challenges some part of the official version. Politicians not completely trustworthy? We've learned to live with that. So we've come to rely on the insights and forecasts of experts...until a master researcher like Phillip Tetlock demonstrates that the predictions of "experts" are about as correct as chance. Moreover, with regard to media experts and opinionizers, the more confident an expert seems (Rush Limbaugh, anyone?), the more convincing he is, and the less likely he is to be correct.
In Chapter 9 Brooke proposed that reporters aren't supposed to make the world better.
Their job is to tell us what is going on, so WE can make it better...
Would you trust them more if you knew more about them?
Video conferencing is pulling back the curtain on our private lives, as our friends & colleagues finally get a peek into our homes. Correspondent Mo Rocca talks with designer Jonathan Adler, fashion commentator Simon Doonan, and New York Times critic-at-large Amanda Hess about what Zoom is divulging about us.
1) What can we learn about our reporters and celebrities by 'peeking' into their living rooms and offices?
2) Do you trust them more or less? Why?
3) What is in your 'Zoom' background and what does it 'disclose' about you?
A pioneer broadcast journalist who began his distinguished career as a wire service reporter, Cronkite was a longtime champion of journalism values who was often referred to as the most trusted man in America.
By the mid-1950s more than half the nation's living rooms have a TV set, which serves as a kind of national mirror. It reflects a populace that is white, Christian, and middle-class. It has no accent. It defines normal. It defines America.
When Walter Cronkite ends his CBS newscast with his rock-solid assertion, 'And that's the way it is,' it's a sweet finish to his nightly suppertime slice of reality. Facts, unseasoned and served deadpan. (Gladstone, pg. 103)
If the highest law of journalism is 'to the tell the Truth and shame the devil' then the Golden Age of Objectivity was the 1950s. The 1951 government film 'Duck and Cover' advised on what to do if the see the flash of a nuclear bomb. Fear of Communism and the threat of atomic war moved us into the 'donut hole' of consensus.
Historian Daniel Hallin uses donuts as a metaphor for the news. (Hallin, 2010) The donut hole is the ‘sphere of consensus;’ unquestionable values and unchallengeable truths. The donut itself is ‘legitimate controversy.’ This is the literal ‘sweet spot’ where undecided issues can be debated and discussed. Outside the donut is the ‘sphere of deviance’ reserved for opinions outside the mainstream of society.
Welcome to the home page of Mr. Kelly's Current Events class. This course looks at the role of the media on international, national, state, local, and school wide levels. Although the content is constantly changing there are recurrent themes including domestic and foreign policy, the economy, war, crime, and the environment. Here you will find assignments, online discussions, and your grades. Be prepared to keep up with weekly reading assignments and be respectful of each others opinions on this site.
