Massing - Now They Tell Us

Now They Tell Us

My first impression of the book was that it covered a lot about the media’s failures in a short 100 page book.  It doesn’t drift into any unnecessary subtopics but stays strictly on evidences that support Massing’s thesis statements.  Massing’s book covers very well the sort of red tape that any serious news reporter got when attempting to cover the truth.    The control of media is definitely one of the Bush administration’s strong points.  I think this sort of behavior from large media corporations is something that can’t be avoided.  Reporters, like any other professional, have the expenses of living to pay.  It’s a logical choice to report what the government expects you to say rather than be blacklisted from your career.

I think that the truth will always be available to the people who want to seek it.  Those people don’t make up the majority of the American population.  BBC, Al Jazeera, Knight Ridder, etc have been reporting their points of views to those who seek alternative sources.  Massing considers it the responsibility of the media companies to be the watchdog of the government.  I agree with that however I also think that that specific responsibility is in a way impractical to be handled by large for-profit media companies.  As long as making money is a corporation’s objective, the government will always be able to control it in one way or another,  be it through the people or direct pressure.                         

Chapter 14, 15, 16

Chapter 14, 15, 16

I think that it isn’t entirely possible for a news report to be purely unbiased or without ethnocentrism.  Even if there was no pressure from partisan networks, there is still a human tendency to be biased regardless.  There’s always an interpretive process that happens when taking in facts that is very human.  Therefore the points that is written out for the media will be biased towards the way it was interpreted by the individuals.  I think the only way to get the most neutral from of news is to read the same story from multiple and foreign sources and formulating for yourself what you think the truths are.  That is, of course, a lot of handwork and also very time consuming, therefore the average reader wouldn’t consider that.      

I think that experiments that attempt to isolate the relations of violent tv programs with violence in viewers is always prone to error.  I think, if anything, its only effective in finding out the effects of violent images to a person in the shorter term. A person’s violent tendencies can depend on an array of things from life experiences to parental guidance to even elaborate areas such as the brain chemistries of any individual.  Also, ever culture seems to have a different level of acceptance for the kind of violence portrayed on TV.  I feel that America is most lenient with live action violence and not so lenient with nudity compared to European countries.  I’ve also noticed that Americans have an elaborate set of rules concerning what kind of cartoon violence is acceptable.  Although they’re kind of funny because shows like Tom and Jerry actually features violence that would kill in real life.  On the other hand, a live action movie could be given a harsher rating even if much of the violence is implied.    

Cosmopolitan vs. Maxim

Cosmopolitan vs. Maxim

Fist off, Cosmopolitan appears to be targeted at women while Maxim is designed for men.  Maxim has more articles concerning technology and gadgets which I assume is something women don’t look for as I don’t find such articles in Cosmopolitan.  Cosmopolitan has more ads and articles concerning women’s fashion as well as photos referencing what female celebrities wear.  Both magazines features photographs of female celebrities, however, Maxim features them scantily dressed and shot by professionals in studios.  Much of Cosmopolitan’s photographs appear to have lower production values.  Some of which has blatantly poor Photoshop work.  Though Cosmopolitan does have its batch of professional photo work.  They appear to be more on the glamour and fashion side as opposed to the skin revealing content in Maxim.  Cosmopolitan does feature cheaper photographs of shirtless men which is nowhere to be found in Maxim.  Both magazines feature articles concerning various topics of sex.  Obviously, Maxim has them written for men’s perspective where as Cosmopolitan has them written for women’s curiosities.  The layout work in Maxim appears to have a lot more picture treatments in a single page as compared to text.  Cosmopolitan appears to be more balanced with pictures and text.  Both magazines convey the message that men should be muscularly well defined and women should be skinny with significant amounts of curvatures.  Both magazines contains articles about how one can supposedly achieve such looks.  Liquor ads can be found in both magazines however, there are no beer ads in Cosmopolitan.  I have only seen a single page dedicated to Sky vodka in Cosmopolitan.  In Maxim there are multiple pages dedicated to Patron, Bud Light, and various whiskies and bourbons.        

Chapter 11, 12,13

Chapter 11, 12,13

The three chapters explain very well how much the thoughts of the majority is steered by a combination of advertising and public relations elements.  I do agree that advertising to children should be a controlled activity.  Although it ultimately comes down to the supervision of parents that determines if a child is going to have excess amounts of sugar.  It’s also a matter of how long the television is kept on a day.  Besides advertising effects on children’s minds, I find it a sad thing that an obese nation is good for business and related industries exploit that.

The idea of hegemony in politics makes political elections seem like a drama.  I think the reason that hegemony is so effective is because the majority don’t find it amusing to be evaluating candidates based on facts they would have to research and interpret for themselves. 

American cultural imperialism does discourage the creation of local original products.  But from what I can tell, there isn’t an actual foreign culture that’s destroyed by the export of American culture.  I feel that there are other issues besides American export that’s being a bottleneck to foreign local product productions.  Poverty and substandard education are definitely factors for this is poorer countries.  In more developed countries, I feel that the issue is the lack of faith in sponsors to finance a native’s vision.  Speaking for filmmakers, I think another issue is that most people don’t realize that a good film doesn’t require a lot of money.  In that case, the high production values of Hollywood films probably discourages individuals from even attempting to make a movie.       

Chapter 8 , 10

Chapter 8, 10

Chapter 8

I think that printed news will only be around as long as the older generation of people are.  Eventually, smart phones and Ipad-like devices will become affordable to the point that the majority will be able to own one.  I wouldn’t know what to say about more rural areas of the country where WiFi hotspots are limited.  As segmented as the media industry already is, I feel that blogs have also broken the segments into even smaller pieces.  For any given topic, there seems to be individual bloggers who are followed more widely than most people.  What I’ve noticed is that some people tend to go directly to those individual’s blogs for what they want to perceive as the truth.  But then these bloggers also have to turn to primary sources for their information.  Therefore it’s smart on the newspaper industry’s part on hiring journalists to blog for them.            

Chapter 10

The most significant thing I’ve learned from this chapter was the whole Google book scanning project.  I was actually not aware of that.  Other than that I find it funny how the book challenge ordeals always has the effect of making a book more widely known and encouraging people’s curiosity to read them.  Their increasing success then leads for further films and TV shows to be produced which completely defeats the purpose of the book challenge.  What’s even more funny is when these motion pictures are released, they’re often advertised as being highly controversial which attracts more audiences due to their implied objectionable content.