court case blog assignment

Complaints were filed against Pacifica, a broadcast company, by a man who claimed his son had heard a George Carlin routine one afternoon; the routine, entitled “Filthy Words,” contained various euphemisms for words that were earlier deemed unsuitable to be played on air. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) won their case against Pacifica, as the Supreme Court, with a vote of five to four, found the material to be “indecent but not obscene.” The FCC aimed to protect children from obscenity, hoping to “channel it to times of day when children most likely would not be exposed to it.” Thus, the First Amendment wasn’t entirely taken away by the ruling, but was rather manipulated to keep indecency levels to a minimum when children would most likely be tuning in to the radio. Justice Stevens concluded that “the content of respondent's broadcast, which was ‘vulgar,’ ‘offensive,’ and ‘shocking,’ is not entitled to absolute constitutional protection in all contexts; it is therefore necessary to evaluate the FCC's action in light of the context of that broadcast.” Therefore, the Supreme Court ultimately decided that the FCC’s guidelines should be re-evaluated in order to more accurately and specifically define the meaning of what is obscene and indecent. This court case helped to create the boundaries for what radio and later television would be allowed to air at specific times of the day. Though many people believe that cable television shouldn’t be censored because people have to pay for it, most stations usually self censor themselves during the daytime when children might be watching to ensure they upset no one. The FCC issues fines for indecency on television and the radio, not just applicable to verbal instances (ie, when Janet Jackson’s nipple was exposed during the Superbowl, CBS and MTV were both fined accordingly). I think, personally, that the FCC regulations are within the realm of common courtesy, and allow for indecent language and obscene content when children are not likely to view it. I don’t think that children should be censored, but I don’t think they should be exposed to content without their parents consent.

Advertisement Analysis

I watched an ad for Hershey’s Kisses. The commercial features the whistling from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ song “Heigh Ho.” The commercial begins with a Kiss being made in the factory and then being wrapped up, and it is given a chance to look at itself in the mirror. It’s then rocketed through Kiss shaped holes in the wall with slogans such as “perfect happiness” written below them. A man in his late twenties/early thirties is then displayed sharing the candy with his daughter.
I believe a variety of ideas can be pulled from this advertisement. The “Heigh Ho” song incites a feeling of ‘family oriented,’ as Disney is a pure and generally safe corporation when it comes to children. Any who have seen the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will also possibly get an image of people hard at work; hard work seems to be a major American value, and even though the inclusion of the song is not a blatant portrayal of the hard working American spirit, it is alluded to on a subconscious level. When the Kiss is given time to look in the mirror, it’s obviously playing to the conceited side of America and to the ideas that you have to be pretty (or even BEAUTIFUL) to make it out into the world. It could also be taken to mean that they take care to make sure each Kiss is up to par, but I think the message of “beauty sells/conceitedness reigns” is a more believable and possibly more effective. When the man and his daughter share the candy, the company is pressing the idea that once again it is family oriented, and also that candy isn’t something just for young children, it’s for anyone who is a “kid at heart.” I wasn’t sure if this was note-worthy, but the man and his daughter were African American, which kind of pushes the idea that the company is nondiscriminatory and that they are supportive of ethnic groups and view them as the same as Caucasian. They could have just as easily used a white family, but they didn’t, which I think is admirable of them; it’s not as admirable/notable as it would have been in the ‘70s or so, but still I think it is good that they were pressing their ideas of multiculturalism, or even the existence of an “American” all inclusive culture.

Postman's Technology Questions

The Apple iPhone was one of the most anticipated new technologies of the previous year; it combines many things (phone, mp3 player, computer, camera, etc.), eliminating the need to carry around multiple devices. The clutter of too many electronic devices was a problem for many members of the technological society of today, ranging from students to soccer moms. The ability to have multiple devices on one platform is a lot more convenient, but a detrimental problem could arise: if the iPhone is broken (which is rather easy to do), the camera, the phone, the mp3 player, everything is incapacitated and unable to be used. If they are lost or stolen, everything is gone. The technology industry outside of Apple will most likely be harmed by this new technology; people will buy the iPhone and have no need to buy separate phones or cameras, as they will have everything they need in one place. The Apple industry will most definitely gain economic power with the new invention. The hype that built up to the iPhone led many to wait on the street in order to get a chance to be one of the first people to own it. The use of the iPhone, along with any other cellular device, will most likely further the implementation of “text speak,” which has been up to this point deteriorating language skills among generally the younger generation of Americans, who find it appropriate to type “ur” instead of “you’re” or “your,” for example.

Feature Story Writeup, Due Oct. 19th

tor“In a Digital Age, Vinyl’s Making a Comeback” by August Brown, featured in Los Angeles Times on April 26, 2009, is an quirky feature story; it takes a fluff issue that is not really hard hitting news and goes more in depth than a normal news story would. Whereas a normal news story would have probably simply listed that a new vinyl record store was opening up in Los Angeles with little more information than that, Brown writes about the decline and hopeful rise of the industry, as well as gives initial information on the owner of the store. The lead, while not straight and to the point (like that of most feature stories), gives enough information for the reader to gain interest. The first sentence reads: “Neil Schield knows the grim state of the music business as well as anyone; last May, he was laid off from a company at the vanguard of digital music distribution.” This tells the reader who, but does not answer the “what, where, when, why” until later in the article. Feature stories often do this, as they are written with the intent of informing and entertaining the reader without a need to only give necessary information. Brown addresses the audience more than a few times, writing statements such as “to play a record, you need a turntable [. . .].” This is one indication of a feature story, whereas in a regular news story any personal pronouns such as ‘me, my, you, yours, theirs, etc.’ are not tolerable and are generally frowned upon. There is a lot of visual imagery used in the article as well, especially when he describes Origami Vinyl as having “a minimalist-vintage décor featuring tungsten-filament lightbulbs and a spiral staircase.” The descriptive nature of the article pulls the reader in and allows them to feel as though they are there, giving them the sensation that they are familiar with whatever is being described. If the article were bland and void of such description, it would probably not be read and/or enjoyed by many people. The article is cut into different sections, each beginning with an emboldened phrase or set of words, such as ‘Trying again’ and ‘A high price’. This actually helps the story along, dividing it into chapters and telling whoever is reading what the next few paragraphs will be about. Brown allows for two different sides of the story to be told, although the skeptics of the vinyl rebirth are given less space and quotes than the other side. Being a feature article, the skeptics’ argument did not even need to have a place in Brown’s work, but their inclusion added more information and thought provocation (at least in my case).

ahhhhhhhhhh

I thought I posted this back when it was due; I checked back today after we talked about it in class and was horrified to see that it wasn’t up, I guess I’ll double check from now on to make sure when I hit “publish” it actually does so. PS, when you talk about how dial up is basically from the prehistoric period in class, you may see me laughing, because that is in fact the internet connection I have at my house currently. Yeehaw!
I’d like to start off by noting that I thought it was hilarious how the first paragraph of the article used the phrase “mere economics,” which I think accidentally made the crisis the United States (and world) is in at the moment seem way more trite than it actually is. Another thing that I found peculiar was the statement “our founders never thought that freedom of the press would belong only to those who could afford a press.” Many of the newspaper companies could afford to keep printing and printing, but a lot of them that have shut down did it because they weren’t making the money they wanted. They, therefore, COULD afford to keep on printing, but CHOSE not to because they weren’t receiving the outcome they wanted. I do think that it is imperative that a solution is found to the problem of the disintegrating newspaper and print industry. This problem, I feel, does not lie in the government’s hands, though. When the government pumped money into the auto agencies, it resulted in a great number of people buying new cars because they were getting a heck of a deal. I do not foresee how there would be any profitable way (and profit, because newspapers are businesses, first and foremost in my mind) for the government to stimulate the print economy. The government could hand a lot of money over to the industry, and it would help while that money lasted. Simply giving money to someone who is poor, for example, does not make them rich for the rest of their life: it’s a short term solution to a long term and long running problem.
The internet at this moment is fairly reliant on print based journalism, but if print were taken away then the internet would be able to sustain itself without the print; those who work with the print, those investigators and reporters who dedicate their time to printing and publishing stories that people can hold in their hand, would make a shift and adapt to publishing their stories on people’s computer screens. It would not be detrimental to the “freedom of the internet” to make memberships necessary for accessing certain news sites. If the only news that was available had to be paid for, however, that would be immoral. Somewhere out there, there is someone with a solution to the “how do we make money off of internet journalism” question, it is just a matter of squirreling out where that person happens to be located. There is a way, there is always a way; the transition from print to internet is inevitable, and I think most people will be with me when I say that I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be an easy transition. Once the kinks are worked out, the new way to access news will be smooth and commonplace. There may even be a revival of the print sometime in the future, when people wish to return to the way things were done in the olden days. As it is right now, though, the internet seems to be where most people get their news from, and while I wish that weren’t entirely the case, there’s not much we can do to stop it right.

Silent News.

I was unable to catch any primetime news shows, so I had to settle for watching pop culture news filler on HLN, a station owned by CNN. While it wasn’t the prime specimen to examine for the assignment, I figured it would get the job done. The only problem I could think of with using this station and type of news versus a show like “60 Minutes” on CBS would be that there was always something on the screen telling what the story was about and all its major components, whereas in “60 Minutes” and most other news shows, the show is based on interviews and commentary, making the sound crucial to understand what’s going on.
The segments on the program were discussing Lindsay Lohan and her supposed stint in a psych ward at a hospital. It then showed a screen capture of her twitter page debunking the rumors and stating that she has been working on a new movie. While I am sure there was a bit more information given audibly by the newscasters, the video alone seemed to give me the whole story did not leave me questioning anything that was going on.
It could be argued that news shows centered around pop culture and celebrity gossip are made to give all the information straight up and are rarely so in depth that the facts are easily misconstrued. Probably the people who watch this portion of HLN are watching it because they want simple, up to date information on celebrities and nothing more. I continued watching the show a little bit with the sound on and they were basically saying the exact same things that the text on the screen said, only put into different forms. The audio was hardly ever more in depth or elaborate than the video, so I can only conclude that, from this “experiment,” some types of news programs can be completely understood by the viewers with no audio needed. Thinking back to episodes of “20/20” and the NBC “Nightly News” that I’ve seen, I would be completely lost of no sound were included with the video. I could probably guess that if they showed war footage that something bad had happened lately, but beyond that I would not really know what was going on. (I would also not be able to judge from the expressions of the newscasters what was going on, because most anchors have a semi-stoic face while presenting the news, probably to not offend anyone by smiling unprofessionally or something of that sort.)

Homework assignment #3

The lead to the New York Times piece titled “Stolen Art by Warhol is Sought in California” is very successful in reeling in the reader. While it is not guaranteed to hook everyone at first glance (because frankly, nothing in this world is 100% guaranteed), the lead has just the right amount of information in it to make a person want to know more. It answers the general questions, but isn’t oozing with so much information that it gives complete satisfaction and no need to read on. What is especially terrific about the lead is that it reveals the story as a mini-mystery waiting to be solved. Carl Vogel and Solomon Moore write that “[t]he theft of 10 silkscreen paintings by Andy Warhol has the Los Angeles Police Department searching for clues, but it has people in the art world scratching their heads, too.” The story is not conclusive, but this is not to the fault of the authors of the article, as no evidence has been found which points in any specific direction of a perpetrator. I find it fantastic that the story looked at two different sides of the story. It gave snippets of police information, but it also gave snippets of information from the art world, which apparently uniformly agrees that Warhol paintings are not something worth stealing in this day and age, as they are easily traceable and steadily losing their value. The article is in the active voice, a trick which could bring life to even the most boring of subjects. On the whole, the article was well written, giving the straight facts in the beginning of the story and giving the less crucial information towards the end. There were quotes from a few different sources, both from the Los Angeles Police Department and from various people in the art world, giving this story credibility on top of everything else.

CMJ236 first article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/technology/09distracted.html?_r=1&hp
Above is an article which, in summation, lists American universities as a whole to be inefficient at properly educating students. One of the major reasons stated for the constant inability of American students to graduate is the focus by colleges on the enrollment numbers rather than the graduation numbers; "the fact that colleges are not held to account for their failures" is a major problem with the education system (David Leonhardt).

The article states that half of enrolled college students in the United States don't graduate within six years. I researched this online and was only able to find sources from 2000 and 2001, which may be all that is available. I think, though, in order to correctly make a statement about the amount of students dropping out rather than graduating, the article should also tell from what years they got their data from. I understand that usually there are trends when it comes to high school and college drop outs and graduates, but the article states up front that "only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree".

The article lists colleges who have a high graduation rate, which is great, but they list a lot more that have low graduation rates. The article also seems to take the bulk of its information from a few studies, one of which took a random sampling of only 68 US colleges. I couldn't find an exact number of colleges that are in the US, but this link http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ/alpha/ sure has well over 2000 colleges listed. To me, 68 out of 2000 (and possibly more) is not an accurate sampling.

While the author did not pull figures out of nowhere to use in his article, he did seem to use either outdated or inconclusive data to form his opinions. I do agree that the education system is going downhill, I simply just believe he could have presented his argument a bit more concisely.