Unbiased?

By: Sarah Harl

Kelly McBride, columnist for Poynter Online, a source for "everything ethics," speaks her mind on "gotcha" interviewing in a recent column.

McBride is referring to recent interviews conducted with John McCain and Sarah Palin by Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. It was argued by some that these were more interrogations than interviews designed to embarrass the duo, specifically Palin.

McCain described his displeasure with the reporting, saying he felt the journalists were not providing all of the necessary information to make the questions clear and straightforward.

McBride proceeded to give the readers a textbook explanation of deceptive journalism, and how what Couric and Gibson did was not considered deceiving journalism, and was therefore not biased.

Now, it is true that none of these questions were out of order: McBride is correct about that. What she fails to understand is that people find it biased when you drill Senator McCain and Governor Palin about hypothetical situations of country A invading country B, and then you ask Senator Obama what he likes to do with his family.

If Obama had been as aggressively interviewed as the Republican ticket, there probably would have been inconsistencies in his story too. And that is what is unfair about this situation: not that Palin and McCain were asked tough questions, but that Obama has consistently not been asked the same questions.

So McBride could have saved the lecture in fair journalism, because it can simply be achieved by asking both candidates the same questions in the same way.

Unbiased.

Read more...

A worry for journalist

By Kellie Green

As a journalist class many of us may be interested in becoming journalist at some point in our lives. Will it become harder to become a journalist than what it was like in before?

The reason I decided to write this blog was because I saw a blog on poynter.org saying that USA Today was laying off a lot of their journalist and workers.

In the article in USA Today it says that Gannett, "which is the largest newspaper publisher" is cutting 10 percent of jobs. There was a fear that some people at USA Today might loose jobs but it was clarified that this wouldn't happen.

What I began to worry about is the future after this cut. We know that newspapers are not making as much as they had in the past, is it going to get worse in the future.

If it does get worse then there might be cuts in the need for journalist. The article doesn't say what exactly is getting cut but it does say that no jobs at USA Today are going to be cut.

It does send a scare to journalist now and future journalists because they are cutting either their jobs or jobs near them. Hopefully a career in journalism will always be around and never be threatened of disappearing.

Read more...

It's easy being famous

By: Gabe Gilson

If you were to watch any college football on a Saturday, possibly on ESPN, you would get the analysis of many people that know football. Of course, all the analysis is coming from former players and coaches that played and coached football.

It seems to me like no matter how good of a speaker, journalist, or analyst one may be, if you were once involved with a big time college football program your chance of getting face time Saturdays in the fall on ESPN is easy. Take Lou Holtz for example. Holtz is 71, deafer than a bat and about as easy to understand as Sloth from The Goonies. Whenever he does give an opinion, it is usually something insanely and annoyingly biased about team he used to coach, Notre Dame.

Holtz is not the only example of people hired on ESPN because they “know” football. Mark May, who used to play offensive line for the University of Pittsburgh, Lee Corso, who coached most notably at the University of Indiana and Desmond Howard who won the Heisman Trophy playing at the University of Michigan. All of these “experts” are not very good at providing the most essential information to the college football fan.

Not everybody on ESPN who comes from a football background is horrible at their job though. Kirk Herbstreit, who played quarterback at Ohio State University, does a great job providing excellent insight into the college football world. Maybe it was the excellent education he got but he always seems to have the right thing to say at the right moment.

If I wanted to be a college football analyst on ESPN, I think it would be very hard without doing a lot of coaching or making myself well known in the world of college football. It is really too bad that the only people who are hired these days are they big time football boys.

Read more...

Everyone knows who Diddy is voting for...

By: Jessica Hartgers

If any of you have been paying attention to American pop culture you have noticed that Sean "Diddy" Combs is taking every advantage of any publicity he has gotten to promote Barack Obama in the race for presidency.

Diddy, who is one of the most recognized male celebrity, is openly honest with his political beliefs. For example, he sports shirts that say "I heart Michelle Obama." But the question is have any of Diddy's millions of fans asked him why he supports Obama? My guess is no.

While Diddy is clearly not the only celebrity to voice his opinions in the media, he is a very influential person and I wonder how many of his fans see his great support for Obama and decide that they themselves are going to vote for Obama also, without making an educated decision.

The responsible thing for Diddy to do would be to use the journalists and free publicity to educate viewers instead of influence them.

Read more...

Swinging the axe

By: Lexie Hagerty

It isn't a surprise these days that newspaper and magazine advertisements are going down. Every other media news story is about a newspaper or magazine that has now cut more employees due to the decrease in ad sales.

However, Mediaweek's article about one specific magazine still came as a huge shock to me.

Rolling Stone had to let go of seven employees in the last couple of days, a cut of less than 2 percent of the magazines 400 full-time employees. It is a slow start, but cuts are inevitable.

The media world should have seen this coming with such an old magazine, but yet it is still so hard to believe. This is Rolling Stone we are talking about. The magazine that any celebrity would kill to be in or even mentioned in.

If Rolling Stone can't overcome the new change in media, there is definately no hope for any of the smaller printed media.

Read more...

The Drudge Report’s accuracy

By: Sara Crouse

The Drudge Report has been known to produce high profile stories over the years. The Clinton Scandal first emerged on the Drudge Report. The Drudge Report has also been known to exploit its fair share of baloney.

Rarely, does a local or national paper generate a story idea from The Drudge Report for fear of its contents being too outlandish. Papers and news sources educate the public on current events, and any source that may not give true information is often disregarded.

Earlier today the report published “2001 Obama: Tragedy that ‘Redistribution of Wealth’ not Pursued by Supreme Court.” Fox News was quick to jump on the news, rather than casting it aside as hushed gossip during a drink with a coworker.

Fox News’ hasty decision to pick up the story will come back to haunt them. The attack on Obama’s statement appeared to many as a harsh blow from extreme Republicans picking a fight.

Whoever first reported the statement forgot to recognize it’s origin from a long interview, in which Obama addressed issues concerning civil rights cases focusing on minorities rights. In context to the interview, the term ‘wealth’ meant qualitative wealth, rather than quantitative economic wealth.

Interpretation of the initial quote can be described as Obama’s support for the redistribution of civil rights, but not through economic means only.

It’s important to base reporting interpretations from the entire interview, rather than picking and choosing. While The Drudge Report said Clinton had options, a journalist/reporter has only one option. That option is presenting the truth.

Read more...

Deadlines come and go

By: Taylor Browning

One thing I've come to realize it that a deadline is not the end of the world, just the end to your project at hand.

I thought about our stories we are writing in class and thought about the reporters for major newspaper and multimedia outlets. Being assigned a strong project with a short amount of time, on the national news basis, would be really difficult to accomplish.

With the election coming up and newspapers trying to find new angles on the subject, it would be even more difficult to create, research, and write more and more articles on the same thing, but with a twist.

I am thankful we get to relate our stories to Simpson Campus, or else I would probably still be researching and writing my first story!

Read more...

NRA gets shot down by Virginia newspapers

By: Erin Floro

The National Rifle Association has proposed to several newspapers in Virginia and other states about wrapping their products in plastic anti-Barack Obama advertisements on Election Day. The plastic wrap would read: "Vote for Freedom... Defeat Obama."

Although the Richmond Times-Dispatch originally told employees they would accept the NRA's deal, they now report that the newspaper's wrapping will not feature the gun lobby's political advertisement.  The Virginian-Pilot also rejected the proposal.

This tactic may be unusual, however the current scheme is not the first time the NRA has employed ads in newspapers. Two years ago in Montana, the gun lobby used a similar technique to support a candidate for re-election in the U.S. Senate.

The newspapers' say they rejected the proposal to prevent appearing as though they only endorse one point of view.  The Pilot's policy, for example, is to sell space on its print pages to candidates or interest groups of varying persuasions.

Read more...

Breaking news in Northeast Iowa

By: Quinn Albrecht

There has been some late news coming from Northern Iowa today. A woman and her two children went missing sometime Sunday evening and where reported missing Monday morning.

The three were found about 8:00 am Monday in rural Littleton. 

This would not be such a strange situation, had this been the first time these three have been in the news. In December of 2007 the woman, Michelle Kehoe, and her two sons, Sean and Seth, plunged into the Iowa river in Iowa City. Several people passing by helped recover the three out of the icy waters.

I remember this story very clearly and thought it was fairly odd. No further investigation followed the accident however. The accident got extensive news coverage at the time. This recent accident is receiving a lot of coverage as well, but the Buchanan County Deputies are keeping a lot of information to themselves at this time.

They say that there is not public threat at this time and no warrants have been issued. I am concerned with the large media coverage that is hitting this very small town, but there is no news to report on at this time. When do news stations decided to let something like this go, and move to the next big story.

There are two main new stations in the area, and the one that is the furthest away, seems to have better coverage of the story. It seems that to one station the story is dying before it even gets started.

Read more...

MTV: get out the vote campaign

By: Shauna Agan

While watching MTV tonight I saw a commercial where a bunch of young adults, including the members of Fallout Boy, were sitting around having conversations about the election. In this particular commercial, a young man was speaking about how many opportunities Barack Obama is providing for minorities and that this has never happened in a campaign before.

As I continued watching my show and more commercials came on, I saw four more MTV made political commercials. Two were repeats, but two were new commercials.

One of these commercials featured musical artist Pink. Pink was briefly explaining the need to voice your opinion and vote.

In the end of Pink’s commercial, she expressed that she had the right to her opinion just as Sarah Palin has the right to her opinion. To me, this insinuates that their opinions are different, and Pink is an Obama supporter.

The final commercial I saw was another group of young adults in a conversation about the election. While I cannot remember exactly what was said in this commercial, I do remember that the commercial supported Obama also.

These commercials do not specifically tell individuals to vote for Obama, but rather they promote the power of voting. However, every one of these commercials does mention support for Obama somewhere in them.

MTV has a lot of power and influence, especially within the community of young adults. Teenagers and young adults are the target audience for MTV.

By running these ads, MTV is campaigning for Obama and promoting his name to young voters. I do not have any problems with MTV running advertisements for Obama because MTV has a right to voicing the opinion of their company just as any other company has the right to voice their company’s opinions.

The problem I do have with these advertisements is that MTV has always been about getting out your vote no matter which candidate you vote for or which party you are in favor of. These commercials do promote individuals voting, but they also add towards the end of all of them that they are supporting Obama.

If MTV wants to openly endorse Obama, they should do that rather than running commercials that just insinuate they want Obama to win.

Furthermore, I believe that commercials promoting to get out and vote and voice your opinion should be separate from commercials supporting Obama. It is okay to have both, but MTV should keep them separate so it does not look like they are saying get out and vote for Obama.

Read more...

New Gen. New Times

By: Adrian Aitken

As technology advances today so must the media to keep up with the times. Newspaper publishers especially need to keep this in mind because the medium has been around for quite some time with little change.

Recently publishers have begun uploading videos onto their respective websites including Simpson's own. Even now this technique alone has become outdated and the New York Times are combating it.

Videos are being uploaded to the Times' website in high definition bringing the company into the latest generation of technology. To usher in the new format the site itself is getting an overhaul.

The entire library is being transferred to the high definition format and given a wide screen format. Also the videos are given their own window to enhance downloads and the quality of the video. Another piece now added to the site includes a "most viewed" videos section for quick picks.

By staying caught up with the times and technology newspaper publishers have a chance of increasing their lifespan a little longer. Also upgrading the site may attract younger people who could become customers in the future which is also need to stay alive.

Read more...

The bashing is getting out of control.

By: Katie Anthony

I will begin this by just stating that I am a supporter of Barack Obama and that this blog is going to be extremely biased and it could possibly make a lot of people angry. Somehow, I'll live with that.

Today in class we discussed the scandal that happened over the weekend with the woman that faked the "B" in her face claiming (stereotypically at that) that an Obama support had sexually molested her. Considering the "victim" ended up confessing to doing this to herself (after, of course, realizing that the "B" was backwards) it got me thinking.

This "victim" talked to both Palin and McCain after the alleged incident. Not to mention the amount of "free publicity" she got for McCain and Palin. Now, I'm not saying or implying by any means, that McCain or Palin supported her doing, but are McCain supporters getting desperate?

This evening in Dayton, Ohio, McCain gave a speech at his rally. However, it was reported by Slate that his message could be summarized into one word; "Boo." This headline got my attention because it read "Political Halloween," and those two words normally don't go together.

McCain seems to have fallen back into the Obama bashing, again, grasping at anything he can get his hands on in order to get his number back up. However, and correct me if I'm mistaken, but I believe the results were that the more McCain bashed Obama, the lower his numbers got.

Call me crazy, but I think that McCain really is grasping at all straws. I'm not sure what's going on in his head, but I don't understand why they [politicians] find it necessary to bash each other. I realize it may be "part of the race," but I think that the media can find another angle to report on.

For me, the bashing has become old news, and doesn't need to be reported on over and over and over again.

Read more...

The bad stuff means the most

By: Jessica Hamell

Why is it that the bad stuff said about the candidates gets the most attention? It isn't what they say they want to do that gets the top spot. It's what relations they have with certain religious figures or what their supporters fabricate.

The news went wild Thursday and Friday about a McCain supporter who thought up a fabricated story about how an Obama supporter had attacked her. Even after they knew it was a fake story people were still going crazy about it.

People have been saying that Obama has been connected with terrorists when he was just on a committee with them. Some people even believe that he isn't even American. If that was the case, I don't think he would be running for president, obviously.

Isn't it more important what the candidates are say or what they want to get done? The people in today's society pay way to much attention to rumors that they hear about the candidates and not about their ideas.

Their ideals are what are going to make a difference in our lives and this country, Not who they were connected with in their past or news about their supporters.

Read more...

Sale decisions

By; Sarah Keller

Have you ever had trouble making money decisions dealing with sales people, such as getting insurance on a rental car, or more likely for college students; insurance coverage on cell phones? I am sure at some point you have come across a salesperson who has tried to get you to take some kind of warranty, whether it be over an iPod, camera, or something completely different. If you are like me you probably have had trouble deciding whether it was a good deal or not, whether you would be saving more money or spending more.

Luckily people like Ken and Daria Dolan from Wallet Pop had people like me on their mind and decided to make a blog about “When salesmen put you on the spot: Answering eight common questions”. In the article that they wrote they answered questions on what are good deals and what are bad deals to take up. They make valid points, points that will help me to be able to say yes or no to a salesperson the next time I am asked if I would like coverage on a certain type of plan.

I might not be asked if I would like fuel coverage anytime soon on a new car because I do not plan on buying a car anytime in the near future (as discussed in the article), so I do not have to worry about turning them down, but I was asked recently if I would like a three month free trial of magazines, it sounded tempting, but luckily I turned the offer down. I am glad I did, because according to the article, I would eventually have had to pay the subscriptions off, and it would have been charged to my credit card. I really enjoyed reading this article, it gave me a lot of insight on things I was not previously aware of, and I would recommend people reading it because it really does give you valid information.

Read more...

Newspapers endorsing candidates

By Austin Bates

By now you've probably heard of various newspapers endorsing one of the presidential candidates. Recently, the Chicago Tribune made news by endorsing a democratic nominee for the first time in its 161 year existence. The Los Angeles Times also made news by endorsing Barack Obama after 36 years of endorsing no one. These are just a few of the many papers across the nation that are endorsing political candidates. So the question becomes whether their actions have an effect on who the next president will actually be or not.

According to NPR reporters, it does. Specifically, Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher says that editorial endorsements of candidates can determine who the next president might be. He related that in 2004, when John Kerry ran against George Bush, in the remaining 15 toss up states, he looked at the number and size of newspaper endorsements. Based on that, he says he correctly predicted what candidate would win what state 14 out of 15 times.

Now this is of course an unofficial method, and anecdotal at best, but the question still remains: can a newspaper endorsement influence who the next president will be? I would say "yes" as well. A newspaper, despite recent declines in readership, is still a very trusted, very much respected source of information. To many, a newspaper might be the most trusted source of news available. So when these papers then endorse a political candidate, why wouldn't their readers, especially the dedicated ones, instantly jump on board with their judgment?

Another question I have is whether these papers should endorse a candidate. After all, as I mentioned, newspapers are one of the most trusted sources of news by many, so should they be tainting that trust, that reputation of mostly unbiased reporting with a political endorsement? Politics is one of the fastest ways to alienate people in a discussion, so why would a newspaper, especially at this time of their existence, risk alienating many potential readers by endorsing a candidate?

My thoughts are that they should never endorse a political candidate. After all, when reporting news, one is supposed to remain objective, unbiased, and outside of the current events (with most topics). While you might argue that endorsing a candidate is something else entirely, I think that it ultimately isn't, and makes a paper, in general, look opinionated. If a newspaper can have an opinion on a political candidate, who's to say it might not have an opinion on other topics that it's reporting on?

Bottom line, a newspaper probably shouldn't endorse any political candidate, ever. Reporting avenues get accused too often as it is with having an agenda.

Read more...

Presidential Debates

By: Katie Schaefer

What is it about the presidential candidates always saying bad things about the other?

Now I understand how by making one presidential candidate look bad, it'll make the other look good, but it always makes them look bad too.

Nobody likes a person that talks bad about everyone around them, but isn't that what the presidential candidates are doing?

I realize that Barack Obama isn't going to go around praising John McCain, but he could say how McCain does have some good points in his plan.

The public would have a lot more respect for a candidate that has his own ideas, but can also admit when his opponent may have a good idea.

Someone has to win, though, and no matter what things aren't going to change. Presidential candidates are still going to put down each others plan.

With all of the debates going on and Nov. 4 closely approaching, Obama and McCain are neck and neck in the polls.

Read more...

Time to focus on the real issues

By Liz Tjaden

The fault could be placed on the media. Or it could be placed on the craziness that comes when a huge election is approaching. Whichever it is, not even the best journalist could have made this story up.

On Oct. 22, a woman in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, claimed she was attacked because she was a McCain supporter. Standing at the ATM, she recalled that her attacker, a black male, knocked her down and carved a ‘B’ on her face after he noticed she had a McCain sticker on her car.

Friday it was discovered that the incident had been fabricated. The woman had been attacked by mental health issues in the past but not by an angry Obama supporter. Maybe this story needed some fact checking but the reporters were only telling us what they had heard from the police. The media cannot be blamed here for the story being false but maybe for giving it so much coverage in the first place.

It’s time to get back to the real issues and celebrate the upcoming holiday by carving pumpkins, not faces.

Read more...

Journalistic hierarchy in sports

By: Hannah Pickett

In the journalism world, there is a definite hierarchy of news-topics taking precedence over others and stories having hierarchies over others.

In the small-town sports newspaper world, winning teams take precedence over losing teams. In the case of Winterset, however, certain sports take precedence over others as requested by the publisher.

For instance, in the fall, football is the key focus, regardless of how the team is doing or how well the other sports-cross country and volleyball-are performing. In the winter, wrestling takes precedence over basketball, again regardless of the grapplers’ success. In the spring, track has a hierarchy over soccer and golf, and in the summer softball reigns higher than baseball.

This season Winterset and I-35’s football teams are arguably the worst and most embarrassing in the schools’ recent history. Earlham football is doing alright, though. This week Winterset and I-35 will lose another football game, and Earlham may or may not pull out a win. Thursday night, two cross country teams and seven individuals qualified for state.

According to my publisher’s requests, all three football teams will be on the front page, the only color page of the section, and the cross country teams will be on the second and third pages.

I am the sports editor and will write all of these stories as well, and I take issue with the losing football teams getting press on the front page and state qualifying runners getting the shaft. I plan on disputing this, as it is not objective whatsoever.

Where is the line drawn in a small town newspaper between being objective and running what the publisher, aka the cash cow, is more interested in? My guess is that this would never be an issue in a larger town. Where do small town, private newspapers get off running what the cash cow has a personal interest in?

Read more...

New tool for journalists is unveiled

By: Allison McNeal

Journalists use a variety of tasks and functions to get the inside scoop on a story.

Since many companies use different tactics, organizations like the World Wide Web Consortum (W3C) have started to develop semantic tools and language to integrate these functions.

Web 3.0 recently was introduced to showcase semantic tools, which are applications that are used to show different formats and can be understood by new applications that are used in reporting.

"The semantic web is an engineering solution that will allow [new applications] to be meshed and available for use by machines globally," journalism.co.uk said.

With this new tool, projects like OpenID, Friend of a Friend, and Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities have started to open up.

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different Web sites, and allows users to have control of their login.

Businesses also benefit by allowing a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing in new web traffic.

Friend of a Friend gives makes it easier to share and use information about people and their activities like photos, calendars, and weblogs.

It also can be used to transfer information between Web sites and to automatically extend, merge, and reuse it online.

Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities can be used to enable community sites to merge their data and enables new kinds of usage scenarios for online community site data.

This organization also allows innovative semantic applications to be built on top of the existing social World Wide Web.

According to journalism.co.uk, an individual could do a search on Facebook and get results back from within that site, but also blog results from Technorati, comments from Flickr albums, and YouTube videos.

"In the semantic web, it is not just people who are connected together in some meaningful way, but documents, events, places, hobbies, pictures, you name it!" said John Breslin, the founder of the Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities project. "And it is the commercial applications that exploit these connections that are now becoming interesting."

Even though these corporations believe that the Internet will allow individuals and different systems to interact with each other, will consumers want to embrace this new tool?

If a consumer searches Facebook or MySpace, will they want to be have results pop up from other Web sites?

While there may be no clear answer, only journalists and consumers will have to put this new tool to the test in the months and years to come.

Read more...

Journalists lie to tell the truth

By: Kathryn Lisk

Last week, my blog was centered around the idea that journalists must ensure that they get their story right before running it.

 Most people would assume that telling the truth to everyone involved in the story would be included in this. But is it?

On The Media examined several cases where journalists went undercover and lied about their identity to their sources in order to cover a story. 

Nellie Bly used her theatrics to fool workers of an insane asylum. She spent 10 days as a patient and once she was released, she wrote a two-part story about the unethical conditions. Her efforts led to more funding within the facility.

On the other hand, Ken Silverstein took undercover reporting to the next level. He called himself a consultant in the market for a Washington lobbying firm and was equipped with a new suit, fake glasses and even false business cards. 

I understand that certain stories cannot be written without undercover journalists. In Bly's case, her reporting led to a positive change. However, as an editor, I would never encourage one of my reporters to go undercover. 

If the public expects its news source to be reliable and truthful, reporters must remain truthful to all members of the community. Even to those who may not be honest with reporters.

Read more...