Weather Story #1
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/Deadliest_Costliest.shtml
1. Hurricane Katrina
2. New Orleans, 2005
3. $81 Billion
Weather Story #2
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/prepare/
Plane Crashes
1. 2
2. 36
3. Part 91: General Aviation
4. SCHD Alaskan Airlines INC
5. 49
One lie can lead to another…and another…and another. Whether or not Dan Rather’s report on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service is fair and balanced or crooked and contrived was beside the point. He lost his job.
The story, which aired on 60 Minutes 2, claimed that Bush received preferential treatment during his time in the Texas Air National Guard. Shortly after CBS posted documents supporting the stories content on their website, they came under heavy fire from critics, or to be more specific, bloggers.
Accusations of many different flavors surfaced: From issues of illegitimate type to political bias, CBS found themselves in a shadow of problems that just kept on building. Once the controversy reached the airwaves, the future of many CBS careers were in trouble.
It still isn’t clear whether or not CBS forged their documents. The investigative panel however, came to the conclusion that CBS did make certain mistakes such as airing the report to quickly and believing too zealously in the truth of their story.
Funny thing is, many news organizations sub came to the same flaws as they covered the controversy. Viewers watched as news sources such as MSNBC and Fox news erringly reported on an erring report. While Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review elaborated on these flaws, I couldn’t help wondering if his own report of the issue was accurate.
This story of CBS’s flawed report is a cautionary tale for all journalists. Because they weren’t careful, they began a spark of distrust in consumers, including myself, that circled around back to them. They turned the truth of their story into a popularity contest. In turn, they became the story and were treated with the same respect.
Poorer than You: Before entering this sight, I have to admit, I was already a bit endeared to it. I’m a sucker for anything that demeans itself, not because I care about modesty but because I like the feeling of being better off than other people.
After traversing the sight for oh… about five minutes (probably a longer amount of time than the average surfer spends on a new blog) I had the feeling that it’s main focus was to help housewives save money. It wasn’t until I caught the description of the site in my peripheral vision, “Money issues for college students and 20-somethings, without being boring,” that I started to care. This line really needs to be bigger.
As a 20-something college student myself, I am often looking for ways to save money. The hustle and bustle of the school/work world however, makes it hard to find the time. Stephanie, the creator of Poorer than You, lays out in a very coherent and ‘non-boring’ format, practical ways of achieving this goal.
She is a very transparent gal. Regularly giving readers updates on her bank account, Stephanie lets them in on her personal struggles with money. She is not a corporate henchman trying to make a buck through deceitful information; Stephanie is ‘one of us.’ A ‘one of us,’ that is, with sources into the financial world.
The guest writers Stephanie has on her blog add to her credibility. The advice posted by “Life insurance specialists and a “certified personal financial counselor” show that she is in tune with the financial world.
The headlines get right to the point and are meant to be appealing for her intended audience. Lots of times they have number in them such as “10 Places to Make Money Online” which gives me the impression, whether rational or not, that the article will be a quick and easy read.
The blog lacks video and audio links, but I don’t think this matters to much to Stephanie’s present and future subscribers. An easy and ‘non-boring’ medium that will help them escape their ‘ramen with a side of peanut butter and jelly universe’, should be good enough.
So……what are priests good for? Well, when it comes to interpreting religious texts, they are the whiz kids. After all, each priest supposively has a tight knit relationship with his specific god. This privilege gives them power and influence. People flock to the churches to learn how to live their lives: how to live morally, how to focus on what’s truly important, how to live successfully, ect. Do Journalists share any of these traits? Walter Lippman wrote that the task of “selecting and ordering” the daily news is one of the “priestly offices in a democracy.” Is he right?
Well, what if the stories on the front page of the New York Times were always about celebrity gossip? What if Lippman and his cohorts decided to merge all the news of political issues onto the last three pages of the New Republic? The order and selections in news publications are supposed to reflect the importance the public places on news topics. Readers are accustom to this process and use it to help decide what is important to them. Through the work of the publications, the public is spurred to act, or not to act. In this way, journalists do carry a very priestly obligation.
A difference between an average news journalist and an average priest however, is shown by the way in which they relay their information to their followers. They both have privileges; the priest claims to have close contact with a god, while the journalist claims to have close contact with specific sources. As the priest interprets the information for the public to understand, the news journalist puts out his information bare, and counts on the public to dress it up with their own interpretations.
From this analysis we see that a journalist lacks a priest’s privilege of an opinion. Of course, there are types of journalists who have this honor. In this way, I would change Mr. Lippman’s observation very slightly. It isn’t as much the task of newsman in general which is priestly, to be more specific, it is those journalists who are privileged with their opinions, such as pundits and editorialists, who are the real priests.
