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Now THAT’s Truthiness!
All:
FYI: A great “Truthiness/Truth” project by a team in Brenda Cooper’s Media Smarts class examining how the media frame the illegal immigration debate, and incorporating constitutional precepts, mass communication theories, journalistic ethics codes, and reporting by the news media. The assignment—in the context of the central Smarts question, “How do we know what we think we know about the world?”—asks students to take a controversial topic and find out how the media frame the debate, and then to fact-check using PolitiFact and other nonpartisan fact-checking organizations.
Among the mass communication theories the students used to evaluate media performance in this case: framing, agenda-setting, cultivation. What I like about this kind of project—an this team’s effort in particular--is that it requires research, fact-checking, evaluation and critical thinking, sense-making and synthesis, and incorporation of a wide range of theoretical and real-world issues, presented persuasively with evidence in an effective package. Very nice work. We will post it as well to the JCOM website.
The team—Pizza Feasters United—created a 16-minute multimedia video, which has been posted in two parts to YouTube. Team members: Ryan Parkinson (filmmaker), Angelica Drumm, Kellen Knowles, Teresa Nield, and Torie Welsh.
The video is too long for YouTube, so it’s posted there in two parts:
Part 1
Part 2
TP
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Gatekeeping and Framing
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Privacy, Taste or the Public’s Right to Know?
One of the most hot-button issues in news occurs when the press publishes or airs images that are emotional or violent or express grief.
Throughout the Bush administration, for example, photographers weren’t allowed to shoot images of flag-draped caskets coming home from the Iran or Afghanistan wars. The argument was thaat such photos violated the families’ privacy, even though many families wanted their loved ones honored as they returned home, having made the ultimate sacrifice. (Cynics, critics and tree-hugging Democrats said the real reason was that the Bush administration didn’t want public support for the war eroded by reminders that bad things were happening over there, in our names).
Ironically, some TV networks were accused of routinely sanitizing the news for squeamish audiences, even as their international feeds contained much more graphic images and commentary. For example, bodies and injured from bombings rarely showed up on CNN, while CNN International broadcast much more horrific stuff.
Here’s discussion of a recent example: the photo of an American GI shortly before and after he was shot and killed.
What do you think? How can you relate this to a) what mass communication theories tell us about how news and perception work? and b) to what you consider the expectations of ethical journalists and their obligations to readers and viewers and citizens?
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Privacy, Taste or the Public’s Right to Know?
One of the most hot-button issues in news occurs when the press publishes or airs images that are emotional or violent or express grief.
Throughout the Bush administration, for example, photographers weren’t allowed to shoot images of flag-draped caskets coming home from the Iran or Afghanistan wars. The argument was thaat such photos violated the families’ privacy, even though many families wanted their loved ones honored as they returned home, having made the ultimate sacrifice. (Cynics, critics and tree-hugging Democrats said the real reason was that the Bush administration didn’t want public support for the war eroded by reminders that bad things were happening over there, in our names).
Ironically, some TV networks were accused of routinely sanitizing the news for squeamish audiences, even as their international feeds contained much more graphic images and commentary. For example, bodies and injured from bombings rarely showed up on CNN, while CNN International broadcast much more horrific stuff.
Here’s discussion of a recent example: the photo of an American GI shortly before and after he was shot and killed.
What do you think? How can you relate this to a) what mass communication theories tell us about how news and perception work? and b) to what you consider the expectations of ethical journalists and their obligations to readers and viewers and citizens?
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