Elections around the world

I found a picture on Drudge Report today. It was a picture of a float in a German parade. The float was two big balloons. One was a representation of Hillary she looked like a shrill old lady bent over and Obama was depicted as a dog biting her. The float disturbed me simply from the picture that was showing. I was extremely offended by the image it was portraying and I began to think about it more. It is ironic that this float was in Germany. Our elections have such a big impact on the rest of the world. When was the last time you saw a float in an American parade depicting Angela Merkel. How many people even know who she is? She is the Chancellor of Germany, the first female, and most people would not know her name if they heard it. People in Germany would only know of our elections if the media was covering it. Very few people seek out that information on their own. It is interesting that the foreign media covers our elections for President but we do not cover other countries. Is that something to hold against our media? Would American's know more about other countries if the media showed more than Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan? Should the media be responsible for making sure the American public knows about foreign affairs or are they simply giving people what they want to see? I feel like I am relatively informed on foreign governments but I have to seek that information out. Hardly is there anything in the news on foreign countries if it is not a country in the middle east. If I want to find out what is going on in Colombia I have to go to the BBC website or the Economist. I believe this is definately a shortcoming on the part of our news networks. They need to step up and show more than what happens in the United States. We are being a global world. It is becoming increasingly important to know about more the our little pocket of the globe.



ihttp://flickabooger.com/archive/2008/05/04/obama-bites-hillary-on-the-butt---pic.aspxt

When Things go Too Far

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/10/girl.fights/

These students in Florida brutally beat another student. It was eight students, most of them girls, most of them cheerleaders. These students videotaped the attack and posted it on You Tube. What is even worse these students did not show remorse. They looked unmerciful when they were being interviewed. All the were concerned with was getting back the cheer leading practice. Why is it that out of eight young people none of them thought it would be a bad idea to beat this young girl?

They probably though that there would be no consequences for their actions. That is what a lot of young people think today. They think that they can get away with anything because rules do not apply to them. They watch shows like Gossip Girls and Greek where the girls are mean, backstabbing, and get away with pretty much anything they want to. These girls probably thought television rules applied to them. Now they are going to be tried as adults and could face life in prison. These students did not think there would be consequences but now there are and they will have to pay deeply.

CNN and CBS

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/business/media/08cbs.html?ei=5065&en=a8fa4cf758327512&ex=1208232000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

I find this story extremely interesting, maybe it is because I did my book report on a book called “Reality Wars” which focused solely on the three big networks and their news programs. CBS has been in last place in the news division for awhile and nothing they seem to do boost their ratings. Moving Katie Couric to the nightly news helped them for about a week but that is not enough in this mega-competitive market. If CBS outsources their news to CNN I think it will have big implications. The media is overall owned by very few companies and there are not a lot of options. For one of the major “options” to outsource their news will just cut back on the variety of news available. You can not help but believe that CNN and CBS news programs will look very similar if CBS decides to outsource. This just cuts back on news options for viewers. I think variety in news programs is a good thing. Different networks will cover different stories in different ways. Taking out some of the competition will not be beneficial for anyone but the networks.

Final Four

March Madness is something that is looked forward to by American's all over the nation. People plan their weekends around the tournament, thousands of people travel to watch the games live. There is no denying that the tournament is a huge money maker for the schools, NCAA and the networks that have the contracts to broadcast the tournament. It has become a staple of March sports and brings in millions. What are the students getting out of this though? Some of them are getting a free college education. Are these students being exploited by the networks and schools? Most of these students will not make it to the pros. Is the fact that they are getting a free education enough. Should these students be making money like the schools and networks are?

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=ef142f3b0b4f1654fd7f971f8f04ba55

The Campaign

Politics always amazes me. This election seems to be different than most. Maybe it is not that different, maybe it is just the first one I have really paid attention to. I found an interesting article on the Drudge Report. It was that Mitt Romney and John McCain are actually getting along. During the Republican primaries they were hated rivals. Romney was seen as an outsider by most and did not have the camaraderie that the other candidates had. This article even went as far to suggest that McCain might pick Romney as his running mate. An interesting thought to consider.

When you look at it even deeper and in a world of what ifs you could have a very interesting election. What if Barack and Hillary run on the same ticket and McCain chooses Romney you are presented with an interesting scenario. America claims to be accepting at all and open to all this election could prove that they American people really can be accepting. On one side of the ticket you would have someone that is a minority and someone that is a female. On the other side of the ticket you would have someone that is a Mormon and someone that would be older than any president ever elected.

For the first time there would actually be diversity in the race. The thought excites me. I know it is all hypothetical right now and full of buts and what ifs. If this was the scenario though I do not doubt that the news media would have a field day with it. It would be very interesting to see how they would cover it. I am sure whatever scenario presents itself this summer the media is not going to slow down on its coverage of the election.

Reality?

It seems that reality TV has had a take over of television. It is the only thing to watch right now if you do not want to watch re-runs. The writer's strike cost the L.A. economy $2.5 billion. I wonder how big of an impact that is going to have on television overall. What changes are going to be made to the shows that come on. Of the shows in ABC's primetime line-up 12 of them are reality shows. The reality shows are getting more and more ridiculous. The situations more and more bizzare. A natural consequence of the strike is more reality programming. I am sure I am not alone in being tired of reality programming. I wonder how big of an impact it will have overall. Will people change their viewing habits. Will it costs the networks even more? It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few months.

Campaigns

The primaries are almost over and for the first time I can remember Texas is important. Our primary is so late in the "season" the candidate is normally decided by the time Texas rolls around. This year the democratic nomination is still up for grabs. What does this mean for us? We get political commercials. I do not know why this is so appealing for me but I love that we get to see the commercials. The last 2 elections Texas was skipped over because we were Bush country, this year is different. My favorite morning radio station had both Hillary and Barack on last week. There was a debate in Austin between the two candidates and there was even an ad in the Lariat for Barack last week. The candidates set up campaign offices in Waco. The candidates have even made trips to Waco in the last few weeks. For a political junky like me I absolutely love it. I can not get enough political coverage and having it in my own backyard is amazing. As much as a I love it though I started to wonder if other people were taking notice that Texas is important this year. I talked to some people, namely my little sister, and she had no idea that the primary was this next week. It is amazing that the candidates can do tons of debates, make countless appearances, spend millions on ads and still people do not know. It speaks for the shear volume of media outlets in our country. There is no way to reach everyone. People can simply tune out what they do not want to hear. If you do not care you can switch to one of the other 532 channels available with the super duper cable package. What is even more interesting is this is the first time my little sister can vote. She should at least care (I can understand if she does not share my level of excitement) who is running and what day she can go cast her first vote. I have a feeling my sister is not alone in knowing who is running. I am sure a lot of her friends fall in the same category as her. It will be interesting to see how campaigns will adapt to reach the younger generations. I feel that they have started to takes steps with blogs, facebook, myspace and other things like that. I think we will see a lot of changes in the next few months with the way campaigns use media. There are so many new outlets that are relatively untapped and there are countless ways to reach the younger generation.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUgA0nj8Xy8

Changing of a Regime?

Fidel Castro stepped down as the leader of Cuba last Sunday. The media covered it for a couple of days but it was not a huge news story. Fidel has been in power for 50 years and has been a thorn in America's side for just about the same amount of time. The American government has taken a huge stand against Cuba by having an embargo against the country. You would think that Fidel stepping down would have caused bigger shock waves in the United States. The United States has had a plan to transfer Cuba to a democracy when the time was right. Obviously it is not the right time. Fidel is not longer the head of the country but that does not mean he is gone. Raul, Fidel's younger brother was named the official head of Cuba. In all reality though Raul has been in charge since last summer when Fidel had surgery. Could that be why there was not a bigger reaction. It can be argued the transition from Raul to Fidel happened months ago and nothing changed. Cuba is still a communist country. Freedoms are still limited and nothing has changed. It seems that the US stance on Cuba has been wait it out, Fidel is old and will eventually leave. That day has come and there are no changes. How many more "Castros" are there. It seems like the United States needs to take a different approach. Raul himself acknowledged that Fidel would still by Commander and Chief. Fidel no longer has the formal title but he is far from gone.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022400963.html

School Violence

My attention this week was captured by the school shooting at NIU. There were tons of articles written about it and it was on all of the major news stations. My heart went out to every student on that campus and I was interested to find out that the shooting at NIU was not the first shooting on a school campus this year it was not even even the first on a campus in the past week. In the past week there had been 4 school shootings. I found on article at U.S. News that chronicled all of the shootings on campus starting in 1966 it is truly mind blowing to look at. Of all the school shootings on campuses in the United States 22 of them occured from 1966 to 2000, 33 have occured since 2000.

There is no way to say that one paticular thing has had an impact on the rise of violence in school systems but it is hard to rule out the effect of media. In 1966 there was not violence on television and movies, people did not have the violent video games and computers were not even a reality. By 2000 all kids are exposed to violence. There certainly seems to be a correlation between violence in the media and the rise of violence on campus. Violence has become such a huge part of society, because of that people become desynthesized to it. People expect the things they see on to be more lifelike so images have become even more gruesome. People have seemed to blend reality and fantasy

It will be interesting to see if people in my generation raise their kids differently. We have seen the effects of media violence and the media is not going to change unless there are government regulations put on them. Protecting kids from violent media will have to fall on the parents. I wonder if my generation will be more savy about the damaging effects of constantly watching violent images can have, or will things just get worse.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/02/15/timeline-of-school-shootings.html?PageNr=1

One of the Crowd

Today I was sitting in the b-school looking at the Wall Street Journal. There was an article called "Designs to Set Us Apart From the Crowd". I thought the article was overall interesting. It focused on five companies that allow consumers to customize their item. The stores were, Steve Madden, Nike, Oakley, Converse and Feddy and Ma. The thing that struck me when reading the article is how much of an influence the media has. It is not enough to have the newest and best, you now need the newest and best that was additionaly designed especially for you. It is consumerism at its worst. It is amazing how much people think they need based on what the media tells them. People are constantly being told that the $50 sunglasses are not good enough instead they need the $250 pair that has been customized. It is such on unrealistic standard that people think they need to live by. I recently read an interesting case study studying for a test. The study focused on the island of Fiji and the body image that women on the island had. Prior to 1980 women in Fiji thought that bigger was better. They did not want to be stick thin and eating disorders were unheard of on the tiny island. In the 1980s their views changed, eating disorders grew dramatically and most young women on the island were on diets and suddenly unhappy with themselves. The change on the island was that TV was introduced. In just a couple of short years hundreds of years of precedent was changed and women had a new standard that they were encouraged to live by.

"Let's Facebook them"

The concept of Facebook amazes me. I truly have a hard time grasping how all consuming it has become. Everyone is a member and if you want to see anything about anyone all you have to do is "facebook" them. The website has even been made into a verb.

I noticed the other day that Facebook was partnering with ABC to bring election results on the night of "super Tuesday". In a way this is a good thing it gets more students involved. A politically unactive generation has an outlet to get involved in. On the other hand all that is Facebook is not good. The amount of pull that this website has is amazing. A website is advertised on it and students flock to it. Every single aspect of a students life is documented through wall posts and pictures.

I guess all things are like this, with the good comes the bad. It is interesting to think about. Does the good outweight the bad? Is it worth having a Facebook account? Do people my age realize that once something is out there it is there for good?


http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7805332&nav=menu115_2_7
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0435648520080204?sp=true