Off Course

In his article, "Off Course", Michael Massing says that The New York Times should cover more stories about the social impact of Pop Culture. I think he has a good point. It would be interesting to have a broader range of stories on pop culture, and to see the effect it has on our society. But the debates about whether pop culture is good or bad or responsible for how children act has been going on for so long. There is no evidence to say definitely either way whether it influences people or not, and I think maybe we would just end up going round in circles, arguing the same things over and over again. On the other hand, more information can help lead to more informed decisions. I also found it interesting that Massing had statistics claiming that many people are not happy with what is in the mainstream media and have concerns. This surprised me because I was unaware that people really aren't getting what they want, when that's what corporations claim they're doing.

A year in the news and agenda-setting

After reading 'A year in the news', it made me realise that I'd been reading the news and thinking the same thing. Everyday was the same story and that was the presidential election. Obviously, it's an important story and should be covered, but it feels like we hear the same thing every day and don't hear much about anything else. On the lack of coverage of slower new, such as gas prices and education, it's unfortunate that these stories don't get more coverage. they're important aspects of people's lives and people should be informed. However, that's just how news works. Big, urgent, attention grabbing stories will always make the news over slower stories, and will always sell more papers. The fact that people aren't necessarily getting what they want to read about is good and bad. sometimes people need to be pushed outside their interest zone and learn about new things, but if they want to learn about certain things and aren't being given the information, that's not good.

Which leads me to agenda-setting. It's a little bit scary that editors and news directors are deciding what's important for us, but if they don't, who will? Not every little thing that happens can make the news. Someone needs to decide what goes in and what doesn't and they're not always intentionally setting an agenda. It's never going to be perfect and it will never make everyone happy. At least this way the media still acts as a government watchdog, which wouldn't happen if the government were in charge of deciding what news made the papers. And as someone said in class, at least most people can realise that they're not getting everything, and take it upon themselves to see what else is out there and other versions of the story. We're not a passive, stupid audience and agenda-setting can only manipulate us so far.