Blog 5 – Jessica Zarate The End Is Here!

When hearing about current news and world events in the world online, on the radio, or on television, always consider the source. News advertisers will go to great lengths to persuade the audience into believing their perception. According to Radford (2003), “News messages may do more than inform viewers about events; they
may also change the meaning and significance of events. How a particular story is reported, and how the facts are filtered by the journalist, can greatly influence the audience. Time and space constraints strip away valuable information needed to really understand a news event” (pg. 67). He goes on to discuss how news can distort events and create fear in many people who do not second guess the news and believe it to be true. He goes on to discuss the idea of “What is newsworthy” and how to detect it. Directors and editors are in charge of the news which gets produced. Things to be aware of are the different types and numbers of similar stories, stories that compete with it, the amount of time available, and the coverage area. The number of events the media actually covers are small and select.
According to McChesney, R. (2002) article titled, “The Rise and Fall of Professional Journalism” there are two functions of journalism in a self-governing society. The functions include, “watchdog roles” and “informative roles”.. McChesney, R. (2002) states, “Journalism should be neutral and unbiased” (slide 6).Readers should be able to trust what they read and make educated decisions with judgement based on true unbiased information.Journalism should be neutral and free from racism, stereotypes, environmental degradation, inspire political movement while staying neutral when presenting controversial issues. I found the video “Who Makes The News” to be very interesting. Before taking this class, it had never crossed by mind that women in media are significantly underrepresented.According to Global Media Marketing Project. (2015). “Who makes the news”, a group of individuals did a study to figure out the ratios of men to women in the news. The findings were mind blowing. In one study, when analyzing the amount of women read about in print, radio and television were 24%, whereas men were covered in the other 76% of coverage. In other news findings, only 37% of newscasters delivering and covering the news on television are women, which means men cover the other 63% of news being delivered around the world. This is a perfect example of the inequalities around the world pertaining to women. I am curious to see other similar studies pertaining to women in the media.
In Sternheimer, K. (2013), according to chapter 10, “For many Americans across the age spectrum, what you have and what brand of stuff you buy contribute to the production of an individual’s status”(p. 246). This is all to true for a majority of our youth. These days, children being to take notice of what things they have, what things others have, and what they need in order to obtain the status they desire. These types of items include cell phones, ipods, name brand shoes, clothes, and purses. I sat down and had a conversation with my brother Anthony; a secondary educator for the the Los Angeles Unified School District, Anthony Zarate says (Personal Communication June 26, 2016), “materialistic items such as clothes, shoes, phones, and other tangible material items become a way for students to differentiate between the “cool kids” and the “not so cool, poor kids. Student’s begin to notice class differences and use these differences to taunt and tease one another when they see a fellow student does not have the adequate materialistic items”. Children are growing up in a world of a hyper consumerist society. One of the questions I often ask myself, where does all of this start? People want to blame parents, but honestly I feel the blame needs to be thrown back on the media makers and the notions they create that tell children and adults that the items they want are necessity.