Could you be the next reporter?

“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to remaining principles.”

-Jimmy Carter, 39^th U.S. President

The times are constantly changing many aspects of people’s everyday lives. With the technology revolution in full flight, media outlets are changing as well. One aspect of change in the media comes from the idea of citizen journalism. It’s changing the ways news is considered “news”. Citizen journalism sites have taken a new approach to the news in which they reveal. Whether it is adding their own input on a news story, finding missing or inaccurate information in a news story, or covering a story that which may not have been covered by traditional news sources, citizen journalists offer fresh insights into today’s “news” culture. But how much can it be trusted?

One of the many citizen journalists’ web sites out there is Philly Future. This is a Philadelphia based site that offers the chance for citizens to write the “news”. The content on this site is more about news stories and happenings that you wouldn’t see in traditional newspapers or other media vehicles in the area. This gives the average citizen the chance to write what he or she may think is news and have it published on the site for other people to share.

Many of the stories on the site may be considered objective. They can range from being biased, to only partial coverage of a story, or even taking a story out of its context. These issues stem from the fact that with citizen journalism sites, like Philly Future, being so open to users, many stories come from those who are interested in the topic or have a stake in the issue. This idea goes on to show that people may present a story from his or her point of view and leave out information that may be critical to the opposing side of that story. This openness for objectivity could be positive or negative in the stories in which a site may cover. In could either bring people together to share their similar ideas on a topic, or it could start a debate between opposing sides of an issue who may share the interest of the citizen journalism web site.

In any case, citizen journalism is an up-and-coming industry that is growing larger by the day. With the demand for more entertainment news, the audience calls for more stories that a traditional news outlet may not cover. So, why not cover the stories that you wish to read yourself? Anything is possible in today’s society.

Survivor

Alexis makes a valid point in the case that the fans know some of the tendencies and abilities of the favorites. But, she overlooks the fact that the producers and editors of the show only put on TV what is appealing to the audience.

In the state of automaticity, there are traps. One of these traps is giving us a false feeling of being informed. Because society is so full of information, people tend to believe that they are greatly informed. However, the truth is that message saturation is so thick that we tend to accept the surface meaning of many messages and believe it to be true. That may be the case in howAlexis feels. She says that they have an advantage because they know the ‘favorites’ tendencies but what she is missing is that the fans are only seeing a small amount of what is really going on. And in that small amount the producers may be skewing the actual truth and give a false feeling that we are seeing reality.

Furthermore, this sense of skewed reality also comes from a term in Chapter 5 known as “Programmers’ Perspective”. Programmers know that they need to attract audiences by tweaking their sense of reality to make a show seem more interesting. This can be a major factor in giving Alexis a false feeling that she knows how the veterans are going to act.

Max Headroom

Max Headroom was an 80's TV series that portrayed the media and how it works in a dramatic, futuristic way. The main character in the episodes is named Edison Carter. He is one of the best reporters in this time and he works for Network 23. Their main competition in this episode comes from Breakthru-TV. Breakthru-TV is faking terrorist attacks to draw ratings because they have “exclusive coverage”. In actuality, the attacks are on a miniature “terrorist studio” and not really taking place. That is until Network 23 finds out of this and reports that it was all a fake.

This episode illustrates a key concept of media literacy that deals most with media content. The antagonist in the episode was all about getting the ratings for either channel. What he was trying to do was make a deal with either network, whoever would pay, and give them “exclusive” coverage to the “terrorist attacks”, even though they were staged. The first to have coverage would then get the ratings the station would want and be happy with that. The thought of getting better ratings was more important than the actual message thus skewing the actual media content of the message.