September 6th

The discussion was all about how races are played in the media and how they bring about the notion of stereotypes that many people believe today. The point of ethics that can coincide with this idea is giving voice to the voiceless. Though it’s ignorant to believe that all people of a certain race behave the same way with the same characteristics, what kind of ideas are expected to develop in the minds of Americans when it’s more often than not a black person involved in criminal stories, white men involved with higher authority roles, and women involved in victimized/weak roles that supplement the man in the story? Surely, we wouldn’t believe in these same stereotypes if we gave the voice to the voiceless, as journalists are expected to do. We can’t steer towards highlighting one’s achievements only, while only highlighting another’s failures.

August 30th

The topics that were the center of conversation during this class period were the viral video of Antoine Dodson that captured millions of views, along with the idea of how the news can be controlled by those who own the stations.

The Antoine Dodson video, once seen in the light of a news story and not a potential autotuned music video, is obviously terrible. Despite the video subject being his sister nearly raped by an intruder, the news station responsible instead made it essentially a parody of her brother. Apparently stories of rape are welcomed by society as long as it can be made into something commercial and popular. No information on the suspect or what to do in case met with a scenario similar to the woman’s in the video. It was merely a shine of how outrageous Antoine is. It’s really disappointing to see in today’s world that, not only the viewers but the producers, look at something as serious as this and instead try to make a comedy of it.

As far as the control of the media goes, we discussed how it can be viewed and analyzed once one is aware of which corporations own the stations. Negative outlooks that can result of this include biased news stories, biased advertising, hiding certain stories that may reflect poorly of those in the corporation, and many others. All of this introduces another disappointing idea, which is that the news media, one area that the public should be able to view without suspicion of doubt, is run by those with money and the content they run is often played by favorites. That in itself, to me, breaks the ethics of journalism. Journalism students are always taught to pursue the truth, give voice to the voiceless, and let the public know of information that they deserve to know. If big news stations are subject to disobeying these basic ideas, where exactly can one pursue big dreams of reporting at high-prestige stations without having to worry about being steered towards a bias they’ve been taught to always avoid?

Intro Post

This is my first post in this blog for JOUR 4250, which is Race, Gender and the Media. I’ll be posting once a week on my thoughts and opinions on what was the weekly topic(s) of discussion for class.