It's back

DanMedia was initially created as a blog for a media class I took at Kutztown University during the spring semester of 2011. It was also completely forgotten about when I passed that class and was no longer required to submit blog posts to my professor. However, earlier today I was thinking of starting a new blog when I decided to check my blogspot account and found that I had already created one that met the criteria for what I wanted to do; which is create a blog where I can write my political views, share news stories I find to be interesting, and perhaps get some exclusive interviews with local politicians on their policies.

Enjoy,

Dan

blog 10

I read an article about President Obama’s budget cuts and I found that the article seemed to work in his favor. They didn’t note anything bad about his cuts and that it is the rich of the country that are causing all of the problems. The article didn’t read like something from Truthout.org or blatantly say that something was wrong, but its word choice such as when it stated that republicans “Lambasted” the president. I found that the Aljazeera website was more liberal. This makes sense because the “conservative” Bush administration began the invasion on the Middle East and spoke out against any network that sympathized with the terrorist. The author of the article made it seem that republicans were at fault for the debt that the U.S is currently in.

I found that the BBC has a much less bias view on the news and that may be because they have no ads and no political party to answer to. The difference between Aljazeera and networks in the US is that Aljazeera has answered to political parties in the Middle East. American Networks are often owned by someone with some sort of political ideology.

Freedom to burn things...unfortuanately

I happen to agree with Mr. Eisenberg. I understand that we as citizens of the United States value and need to express our freedom by saying certain things however burning the Koran is taking it too far. The idea of freedom of speech is just that, speaking and writing (under the freedom of the press) however once you destroy an item that many in the world and U.S. find sacred you have taken it too far.

How are we supposed to portray to the world that we are a free nation where any one’s ideas can hold ground if we dismiss anything that is different? By giving the pastor in Florida the attention he wanted we are sending a message to the world that says “if you have an idea different than ours, we’ll burn it.” This is exactly how the people of Afghanistan who are not on either side will view it. This stunt will only create more problems for our troops and give Al Qaeda another tool for recruiting. Our free speech and right to protest must be done carefully and respectfully. It is one thing to protest something that you don’t find agreeable but it is another to destroy something that someone else finds sacred.

If the pastor even wrote an article saying that anyone who isn’t Christian is going to hell he would have caused less of a fuss than he did because there are thousands of people writing the same thing on different blogs. However a burning of something sends a clear message and regardless of how his actions are protected under the first amendment, they are not something that should be copied and only spread a message of hate from the Christian, United States to the rest of the world.

Movie Violence

For this blog post I had to recall the number of violent movies that I’ve seen and look up their ratings and in the end I’ve decided that the MPAA does put violence in its place. Many Violent movies are often rated R and for good reason because many of these violent movies include sex scenes in them as well which makes up for the R rating.

I don’t believe that the violent parts to movies are particularly harmful to children because a good parent will be able to tell them that it is just a movie and the extreme violence that happens in Movies such as Saw does not happen in real life.

However, sex is an entirely different subject. A parent can’t bring a child into a movie theatre to see a sex scene and tell them that it doesn’t happen in real life. The issue of sex should be put too much higher importance because it is a subject that can really disturb some children if not approached carefully.

Take for example the movie, Gangs of New York. The violence is obviously very excessive and the gore may have added to the R rating but it is excessive to the point where one should know that it is fake. The amount of sex in that movie however is almost appalling, that along with the obvious degradation to women that is still very real today. I remember when I first heard the title of the movie I wanted to see it and my dad wouldn’t let me just because of the multiple sex scenes in it.

I ultimately think that sex should be handled much more carefully and that rated R movies should be saved for adult themes rather than just violence.

War of the worlds

After reading page 62 of the text and listening to Orsen Welles’s radio interpretation of War of the Worlds, I can understand that the research regarding the mass panics in 1938 were flawed. The broadcast was fun to listen to but even if people had missed the first disclaimer, one would have had to completely zone out during the music and disclaimer breaks for them to not hear the disclaimers.

The radio broadcast may have been the reason that many people today assumed that there was a mass panic on that night in 1938. The broadcast said that chaos was coming and that people would die, so it is right to assume that a lot of people may have taken it too seriously. The idea of “group thought” comes to mind when hearing of situations such as this; if a lot of people believe that something is true, than it is often perceived to be true, even if it isn’t. Just because a lot of people may have misinterpreted the show and thought it was real doesn’t mean they decided to kill themselves over it.

Also, a lot of people believed that the radio broadcast had caused mass panic so it stuck that way for many years. People just assumed that those who listened panicked over the broadcast and no one questioned it. When listening to the broadcast, one has to wonder if the people already knew Orsen Welles than, why did few people recognize his voice. He did have a daily show that many must have listened to and recognized him for, but regardless people didn’t think twice about aliens attacking the earth. The show followed the basic news structure except for the multiple disclaimers warning that the show was just that, a show.

media post response

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=146589

For our post this week I read a short article about the decline in traditional methods of watching television among urban audiences. The article states that many who live in cities are beginning to get their TV fix via laptop, gaming console (Netflix or Hulu), and even from their phones.

The article went on to say that many of those who are using these non-traditional methods of watching TV are minorities. The percentages of Latinos, Asians and African-Americans watching on new platforms are much higher than the percentage of white people.

These numbers however do not surprise me. With cable becoming digital it becomes much more expensive not to mention that many cable companies offer the extra channels such as HBO and Showtime, watching TV on a television can become a financial burden. The minorities that live in cities are often times closer to the poverty line than a white person who lives in the city. This is not always true however the percentages show that there is some truth to this stereotype.

The rise of people who have begun watching TV through other mediums but TV may have the network companies re-thinking their methods of getting their programs and advertising across. Networks will need to find ways to entice their advertisers to stick to the television model because advertising on the internet is much cheaper and a much wider audience is exposed to the advertisement.

It seems that the actual television has become the odd man out and cable is becoming less and less relevant which is also making the digital high definition law, which was passed a few years ago, almost pointless if people aren’t using the boxes that are being put on their TVs.

Ad Diary

Over the weekend I didn’t have too much of a chance to watch TV or do much of anything because I was on duty as a CA in golden bear south. Although when I did watch TV most of the ads that I saw were movies. I saw a couple of fliers on campus about the rapper/actor, Common coming to KU to make a speech about something. That particular flyer didn’t have exactly what he would be discussing. I don’t think he is any up-coming movies that he could be promoting so I’m not sure why he is coming and the only information about when he is coming is at the very bottom in small letters.

On Saturday, the day I kept track of the ads, I spent most of my time watching TV shows on Netflix and one show in particular called the IT Crowd. The show didn’t have commercials on Netflix however throughout a few different episodes the Iphone comes in as product placement. I thought this was weird because it is a British show and although I knew that the Iphone was sold overseas I didn’t know that it was popular enough to be mentioned in a show more than once.

When I wasn’t watching Netflix I was watching USA and many of the commercials were for Vonage and Burger King. The rest of the commercials were movie previews and previews for shows coming up on USA. For example there were at least two commercials per break for WWE wrestling which makes me think that the majority of people who watch USA watch it for their showing of Monday night wrestling. Another commercial came up which was a sale at a local car dealer in Coatsville. This reminded me of how people who own channels have to have some sort of local flair to their advertising. It was funny just because now that when I see some local commercial amid a bunch movie and television show previews I know why that one local commercial is there.