True-isms

trueisms — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:16:15 +0000

After the quiz, we had another great class discussion. What the media provides for us. The book tells us its six different things, but when you get down to it, media is really just there to entertain. Even when its informing us, being informed is being entertained.

There isn’t a lot of time left in the semester, but what time we do have left, I hope class discussion makes up most of it. I’ve always felt lecture was too one sided. Professors teach us, but too much of the time is getting their take on a topic. This class works well in a discussion atmosphere because media is nothing new to any of us. We all have experience with it and we hall have our own point of views on it. We can learn a lot from each other.

trueisms — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:59:59 +0000

Last time was another good discussion on ethics. The entire class had things to say. I guess its because ethical matters are so opinionated and everyone has an opinion to share. A lot of people bring good points up, I hope there are more discussions like that in class. I’m taking several online classes and every one of them, from computer science to accounting wants their students to discuss topics. However, most of the discussions break down into, “good job” or “I didn’t think of that.” There isn’t a lot of variety to the responses online. You can’t have a conversation like we did in the classroom. I suppose that’s the trade off when you chose to take a class online.

Conflictions of Interstrations

trueisms — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:16:41 +0000

It’s easy to see how companies could easily fall into a predicament of a conflict of interests. They get so big that the ethics of one sector could conflict with that of another. Should one company advertise a product they produce on a media that they control?

I think it also has to do with lawmaking too. Our government exists to protect the people, so do they protect the people by taking their right to bare arms away to protect them? Is protecting the people the same as subduing them? Do you loose a little bit of liberty for a bit of security? Isn’t the government there to protect our liberties?

People for the ethical treatment of ethics…

trueisms — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:44:42 +0000

In our last class we finally got to turn around and use those computers that have been there all semester. We went to news websites and attempted to find their webpages where they spelled out there own code of ethics. It was kinda troubling to see how major news networks such as cnn and foxnews didn’t have their code of ethics available to the public.

Yeah, I know. Just how big a deal is it anyway? I would have never bothered looking for it if my professor didn’t make us, but should it simply be implied enough that we should believe that what news they feed us is bound by moral code to be truthful and informative? When you buy food, you want it to say, FDA approved because you want it to be safe. Well, there’s no regulatory system in place to make sure news fed to you is safe, truthful. It would be concerning to look all over you food package and not find any FDA approval, is it concerning to look all over a news site and not find anything telling you that this news is true to the best of their ability?

Tribes… Not just for natives anymore

trueisms — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:18:44 +0000

It was interesting to see a speaker describe the networking people do in the modern age as ‘tribal.’ Tribes, by nearly definition, are extremely small, close-knit, homogenous, often exclusive. While there are some social networking groups that replicate that, for the most part, as social networks grow, they strive to become the opposite of a tribe.

In this age, when you meet a group of similar people on the internet they are often share only one or two common interests or features. San Antonio Dog Lovers and Texas Punk Rockers are loosely connected to one another, meeting informally on the web, often never meeting each other face to face. Their goal is to become larger, more well known, diverse and there by less exclusive group. I was part of a group on the internet composed of only a dozen people or so originally. We told original creepy stories to one another for fun. We came from all over the world and had only one common interest. Over time, people came and went but our membership began growing into the hundreds and then we broke a thousand very quickly. Pretty soon the forums became so divided, groups were forming within the original group. Divisions became evident and sides were taken.

It just shows how we seem to want this division between one another. We group together until that group grows too big and then we search for a smaller division, until that one eventually becomes to big itself and then we start all over again.

Everything I ever needed to know, I learned through television.

trueisms — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:15:50 +0000

I think the blemishes of television really come out during periods of debate and controversy. Not the kinda controversy where everyone is on the same side like the ‘balloon boy’ controversy. I’m talking about stuff like healthcare, presidential debates, gay-marriage.

The public encourages TV to put on mind-numbing shows like Jerry Springer, I can hardly blame TV producers for catering to the masses. On the other hand, I feel television should be held accountable for the opinions it presses upon the public. Especially when the public is the source of revenue for said television, such as PBS.

Many people focus on the blatant opinionated views of cable news such as CNN and Fox News, but I have a bigger problem with the agenda planning of PBS which uses your tax dollars to push their views, especially on the public that can’t afford cable television and rely on PBS for information. I won’t list the evidence here, but I encourage people to google it.

The man who sold the world

trueisms — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:43:10 +0000

The alarm goes off this morning, I wake up to radio commercials. The television turns on, commercials are the first thing I see. I go online, advertisements on the top and sides of the webpage. Checked my email, its full of spam. More radio commercials on the way to work. Billboards block out the morning sun as I drive. Flipped through the paper as I drank my coffee at my desk, a full page of ads here and there. Got a call on my cell phone at mid-day, Time Warner wants to sell me phone service. Checked the mail on the way home, one bill, the rest were ads. There was a flyer for a chinese food delivery rolled up and stuck on my door.

Pretty soon they’ll be beaming the advertisements directly into my brain. There’s so many things to buy, but not enough money to buy them all. Perhaps products wouldn’t be so expensive if they didn’t spend all that money on advertising it.

Then again, its all those advertisements that make television, radio, newspapers and even the internet possible. Its kind of like a tax you pay. You wouldn’t be able to have media to enjoy if somehow your money didn’t pay for it in the end.

Inherent value

trueisms — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:46:38 +0000

The mid-term was exactly what Mr. Landa said it would be, a rehash of the quizzes we had taken. Pretty simple, I fell I did well. Afterward s was another TED talk by an advertising guru. I really enjoy these videos and I’ve watched a few of them at home on my own. Rory Sutherland makes a good point that the way we perceive things is how we put value into them, not necessarily how much they’re actually worth.

I loved the bit about turning cereal ‘squares’ into ‘diamonds’ and how people responded to them differently. It reminded me of a story my dad told me years ago, how back when he was young, Royal Crown whiskey was no better than any other whiskey. They kept lowering the price like everyone else to encourage sales, but no one would buy it. Instead of changing the whiskey, they simply re-marketed it by putting it in a velvet bag and raising the price. People perceived it as higher quality whiskey and because of that, people started buying it up.

One flu over the cuckoo’s nest…

trueisms — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:47:30 +0000

Had to skip class monday because I had picked up something from a patient last week. Could be the flu, the swab test came back negative, but I heard rumor’s that those things are only right one out of three times. Just stopped by to pick up my quiz to study for the midterm.

The combination of sick and prescription drugs are making me loopy… meh. time to water the cat…

More after the break…

trueisms — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:34:41 +0000

After the quiz today we watched the evening news, timing the news report, weather, sports, commercials, teasers and the talk time between reporters. Though roughly half the time of the half hour news show was spent reporting the news, very few stories were of any true importance or had an impact on my life. Of course the importance and relavance of each news story can be argued, sometimes weather is a very relavant topic when I want to plan my weekend. However, almost a third of the time was spent on commercials, which Mr. Landa said is the lowest amount of commercials that he’s seen in all the time he’s done this activity.

The local news had a lot in common with Entertainment Tonight, something most people can agree that is simply not news. There were a lot of teasers and hooks to keep people interested, “More after the break…” In fact, about half way through the program I felt that the commercials had become the focus when the news, after returning from comercial only touched upon one subject before having a teaser and going to another full set of commercials. In all, the news may have come back from commercial for maybe a full minute. It said alot about what the network’s intended goal for the time slot was meant to be.