Who owns the Media?

Who owns the media is a very important topic in today's world, with multi-billion dollar news companies competing with tens of thousands of smaller sources to control the public's view of the world. The news is an extremely powerful tool and whoever controls it, controls what everyone sees about recent events and what we think about the world. To avoid a single person or group being able to abuse that power, it is important that the media has multiple outlets, but having too many sources of news can be a problem too. The more news sources there are, the less reliable most of them become. For example, there are very few TV news stations, but they almost always have reliable information. Meanwhile, there are thousands upon thousands of internet news sources like blogs and social media, but their information is far less reliable and than larger sources. This means in order to make news as reliable and available as possible, there needs to be a balance of size and number of media outlets.

The majority of news in the modern day, comes from a handful of very large sources. Companies like Google, New York Times, CNN, and a few others that are listed here, control huge portions of the media because they are the most accessible sources, and can easily be found in print, online, or on TV. Their audiences also do not have to worry about fact checking their information, because it is almost always reliable. Reasons like these attract audiences that do not have the time or initiative to look at multiple sources, and want their news quickly. The problem with this approach to news is when it comes to news like politics. Politics are often highly opinionated, and when your news comes entirely from one source, you are more likely to agree with their point of view and disregard any other.

The other portion of media sources are the smaller sources that are often located solely online. These sources ,as I mentioned earlier, often have less reliable information and should be fact checked, but there are advantages to these sources too. Because there are so many of these sources, it is easy to check other sources to confirm facts, and it is also possible to see an issue from different perspectives by using these sources. Although this approach to news is much more time consuming, it is a good way to eliminate opinion from your news.

Satire Blog

Being informed about the news is more important than ever. Events that take place on the other side of the globe can have a huge impact on your day to day life, so it is important that you at least have a basic understanding of recent events. Unfortunately, there are dozens of new and entertaining distractions from keeping ourselves informed. One solution to this issue, is satire.

Satire is a much more entertaining form of news that focuses more on humor than actual information, while still conveying a fair amount of information. For example, this article by the Onion makes fun of Donald Trump’s campaign, and also informs readers that he is the last remaining republican candidate. This story is much more entertaining than a typical news story, but still contains a fair amount of information and informs readers fairly effectively. There are cases where satire does not contain any useful information about recent events, like in this story by the Onion that just makes fun of people's eating habits, but satirical sources are usually relatively reliable sources of information.

One issue with satire is when it is taken seriously, which can cause confusion and spread disinformation. Because of this, it should be made clear when something is satire so readers do not confuse it with a serious news story. Some examples of this can be found at literally unbelievable which is a website that compiles people's responses on social media to satire that they had taken seriously.

What Does Your News Say About You

            News is something that we are all exposed to every day in one form or another. It can be on TV, the internet, newspapers, magazines, or even just by talking to people. There are so many forms of news that it is practically unavoidable. News also can be told from many different perspectives, and the same story can be interpreted to mean different things depending on who is reporting it. For example, a conservative news source might have completely different stories than a liberal one, or an American news source like CNN, might have vastly different interpretations of news than a British news source like the BBC. Having so many forms and perspectives of news can be helpful in fully understanding recent events, but also confusing as you can’t tell which sources are trustworthy.

            Keeping track of the news can be a stressful and time consuming activity, which raises the question of, why bother? Except for some local stories, the events reported in the news very rarely directly affect most people’s day to day lives, so why do people feel inclined to keep track of the news? I think there are a few different reasons. The first reason I think people watch the news, is simply curiosity. People find that events that are in no way related to them are interesting to learn about. The second reason I think people keep track of the news, is because even though an event might not directly affect their life, there can be some indirect repercussions. This might be as minor as scheduling events around the weather, or as major as managing your finances based on the stock market. You could continue living your life without knowing about details like these, but you can plan your life more efficiently if you do know about them.

            The news source I observed over the past ten days was the Onion, which is part of a category of news sources that are often overlooked, satire. Satirical news sources report news in a sarcastic and usually less informative style than most other serious news sources, and most of their stories are parodies of actual news stories, like a recent story poking fun at the recent stories of issues with white house security. Since satirical news sources usually contain less information than other sources, they are most commonly used as a source of entertainment rather than news. However, one advantage to reading satirical news sources that I notices while observing the onion, was that it seemed to less bias about political stories than in many other sources. I believe this is because satirical news sources are more concerned with entertaining their audience than spreading their ideas.

What is Journalism?

Journalism can be a very difficult topic to describe because The line of where journalism stops and gossip or opinion begins can often be blurred, and be different for different people. The American Press Institute's definition of journalism is the act of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting new and information. I think this definition is a good summary of what journalism is, but some of the ideas in it can be expanded on.

One important part of journalism is researching the topic firsthand, from reliable sources. Things like interviewing people who know a significant amount about the topic, reading sources that contain accurate information about the topic, and visiting the location of events related to your topic are some of the most common forms of research. Without research grounded in facts about the topic or witnessing an event yourself, it is impossible to write an unbiased report of a topic.

Another crucial part of journalism, is avoiding bias whenever possible, both in your research and when compiling your research. some amount of bias will be present in any form of journalism because you can not always know every detail about your topic, but it can be partially avoided by using a variety of sources and covering as many perspectives as you can. Interviews can be especially biased in some cases, because the interviewee has only seen the event from their perspective, and could have missed important details that completely change the story. The best way to avoid bias in your research is by taking information from every perspective of the event possible. I liked how they said it in the Editors Weblog when they said,” if you get complained at by both sides for being too close to the other you are normally somewhere in the middle, between both camps.”