Saturday, September 18, 2010

U.S. Constitution Week

Marshall University invites you to attend the following event celebrating Constitution Week:


“Politics, Poliical Parties and the Media in the 21st Century,” Edwards Playhouse, 11 a.m., Sept. 21, 2010.

Journalism students will use this space to blog about all the learning that took place. Ready, set, go...

4 comments:

kquinonez said...

While I arrived late to this lecture and missed Bruce Hardy's portion of the lecture, the remainder of it was certainly informing as well as engaging. Students and faculty alike were very involved in the discussion that followed the lectures.

One staggering portion of the lecture was the chart brought by Hardy. It observed viewership of various news programs from June 8-28, 2010. The chart compared viewership by both political party and ideology. In both charts, Hannity was the top viewed news station. Ugh.

While I find shows such as The Daily Show entertaining, I certainly wouldn't refer to it as a news show. This lecture made me realize that I cannot respect most news shows because more often than not, they are completely biased.

The moderator, Beth Voorhees, brough up an interesting point about her father and the media. She said that he would mute advertisements about Democratic candidates in an election. She posed the question, would this have happened if remote controls did not exist? What would happen if there weren't?

The discussion greatly revolved around biased media, technology and its influence on media, and the manipulation of media by political candidates. I am glad I attended this event.

Marlowe Hereford said...

This panel discussion was just as engaging and intense as the discussions I attended at the AWSM and APSE conventions earlier this year in California and Utah. I left with five pages of notes.

All three panelists--Albert May, Bruce Hardy and Robert Rupp--and moderator Beth Vorhees all raised very interesting points. May's study on the polarization of various publications, radio stations and news channels was very eye-opening. Hardy raised an excellent point about how news outlets are the way we get to know the politicians and Rupp followed that point by saying it is not like the old days where candidates would take personal approaches to campaigning. Now, it is heavily invested in advertising and debates.

Of all the points and questions raised, the most interesting of all to me was how we are in information overload in the 21st century. In the past, the issue was not having enough information or choices. Now that we have more information than we could ever want, we don't know who to trust or how to deciper accurate and credible journalists from talking heads and bloggers. Hardy said Americans do have a good track record of making good choices with limited information, but that fact alone still gives me reason to worry. Rupp's comments on this matter and similar ones were especially insightful to me. He said we have the responsibility to check history and records to prove how credible something is or not.

I am not a political writer by any means, but the topics discussed today were beneficial to any writer covering any subject. I am glad I attended and took away the knowledge I acquired and wrote down.

J Eric McMillion said...

The lecture Political Parties and Politics raised or renewed some fears in political coverage that I first realized in Dan Hollis's class two springs ago. It seems now that the media is becoming more fragmented and people are only hearing one side of the issue.
Bruce Hardy was able to show how polarizing the big media has become. What is even more scary is the fact that its becoming harder to distinguish between opinion and news.
Its also interesting that Dr. Rupp said that West Virginia has for the most part avoided outsiders influencing their elections, but that can not last for ever. Especially as the newer generation becomes of age to vote and has been exposed to much more national media and less local media.
Something that I feel I can take away from this is the realization that media literacy needs to be taught now in high school. It wasn't when I went to high school, but it needs to be today if we want the future generations to be able to make smart voting decisions.

katie olszeski said...

I thought this lecture/discussion was very informative and definitely made you think. Each of the three speakers made excellent points about how people absorb the media now , and basically are being spoon fed the information they know about candidates and political issues.

May used a chart to show the polarization and separation of different news channels and how they are split among viewers. And that most "news" channels are not news channels but that they are in fact all almost "opinion" channels , and that anymore a "news anchor" is just a news anchor anymore but that they may throw opinions in with it too. And that in fact the most unbiased news is the local news.

Hardy explained and talked about the almost raw media side of it , like Obama being on demand , and the effect this has on people.That we need to learn how to filter what we see and hear, we have to become our own media analyst. That media and money almost are now going hand in hand to be able to win or even run for an election.And hearing contested facts vs. uncontested and to be able to maybe learn the difference or to double check it for yourself.

Rupp explained social media vs. traditional media. That now people are getting to know the candidates through youtube and facebook instead of in person.And how that is effecting voters now.

There were many great points brought up even by the audience after each speaker talked.

The fact that we almost vote with our remotes now.. you hear a add for a candidate that you don't think you want to vote for and you just simply switch the channel or mute the tv.That there is a fine line between confusion and enlightenment and that as consumers it is our responsibly to learn that.

And the idea that the news is now going more narrow and there are more viewing options but with less of a broad over look of the issues.That the audiences are becoming narrow and only wanting to hear news where their own opinions are being reflected.

As for myself i've tried to learn to filter what political information i hear after taking Hollis's class last year.Because i never really thought much about it until it was brought to my attention.And i think a lot of people could benefit from going to a discussion like this.Im really glad I went and I actually enjoyed it, getting to hear everyones views and opinions was really interesting.

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