The Media: Full of 'Gutter Snipes'

The world is constantly changing and growing. People develop new technologies, come up with new ideas, and as the whole the human race develops. So, when Bill O' Reilly mentions during an interview, "The media, remarkably, hasn’t changed since Benjamin Franklin was printing ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac'," it stirs up a bit of thought.

O' Reilly explains that media is filled with "a bunch of gutter snipes" all trying to push opinions backed with facts, and that dishonesty is so prevalent it is almost scandalous.

Despite this fact he says, "The media does keep an eye on what's going on and the people really get both sides of the story..."

With this in mind, where do American's go for reliable, unbiased news? The news is easy to find, online, in print, or on television, and it is a citizens responsibility to detect if the news does show bias. If so, they should look at the story from both sides and form an educated opinion.

When considering O'Reilly's comment that the news hasn't changed since Ben Franklin he is showing that the media has been motivated by their own agenda and it's up to the public to decide what is right and wrong form there.

Photo from Photo Bucket

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Twitter's Place in Publications

"Off the record," journalists have heard this over and over again, and it is a bit of a disappointment every time. Clearly journalists want the entirety of an interview to be "on the record"; we are not nearly as interested if it can't be published. With this in mind, what is the right way to use tweets?

As of late, members of the senate have been claiming that their public tweets are to be considered off the record. The fact that these tweets are public, for everyone to see, should point out how outlandish of a suggestion this is.

According to Jeff Sonderman on Poynter, several prominent bloggers and writers noticed this disclaimer and were then forced to remove several tweet quotes from their blog, noting the absurdity of the situation.

If prominent members of the senate are willing to tweet their thoughts for the entire Twitter community to see, then they should be equally willing to have these tweets quoted in text. It is no different then journalists using a quote from a previous speech. Senate members should back off, and keep their tweets "on record

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