ATTACK WATCH

With every class I become more excited to join the field of Journalism in the future. Truth and Journalism was the subject of my group's presentation today. My particular part in the presentation was on censorship and verification. While researching for this presentation I realized that I love truth and giving it out but I also do believe in some censorship for the protection of our nation as a whole.

There is a song called "Have You Forgotten" by David Worley (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6yLQRF-cEU) about September 11th and in it, it says "They took all the footage off my TV. Said its too disturbing for you and me. It'll just breed anger. That's what the experts say. [If] it was up to me I'd show it every day." I remember 9/11 and how you could not turn on your TV without finding some footage of the attacks on it. A part of me thinks that censorship should not occur in a situation like that; however, another part of me thinks that censorship is necessary. I mean, my parents sent me to school for the next two weeks and the only thing we did was sit in a dark classroom watching the news and watch as the death toll grew. My teacher told our class that basically our country was going to war and that it would be a long one. Many of us, he said, would have family fight and die in it or we would even be able to be apart of it one day. To us, the news put our faith in his prediction which eventually held to be true. Although this teacher was radical in what he taught us, my point by sharing this is that it is my honest opinion that a classroom of nine year-olds should not be watching the gloominess 9/11-type news. It takes away innocence in the young. Should there have been more censorship with 9/11? Maybe, if you consider the youngest of viewers. Should there have been less censorship in consideration to when the footage got taken off the TV? I really do not know. News is not really news if it happened months ago and so the media industry most likely moved on to other topics.--Like I will do right now.

In my presentation, I talked about AttackWatch which is Obama's "Snitch Line" or so it is being called by the conservatives. Basically, it is a website supported by Obama's 2012 campaign where the average person can report those who are "lying" about or opposing him, his views, or his administration. Why do I put parentheses around the word? It is not because I side with the opposition--which, by the way, I do--but it is because in politics a Republican says that a Democrat lies and a Democrat says the Republican lies. Truly, there is "opposition in all things" (2 Nephi 2:11 http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.27?lang=eng).

For those of you readers who are interested in AttackWatch (either for the purpose of mere interest or for the purpose of supporting it) the website is as follows: http://www.attackwatch.com/

Twitter This And Twitter That

I guess by now you have all figured that we should all have a twitter account for this class. If you have yet to realize this then you have either been "sluffing", sleeping, and/or dead for today's class. No problem, for you, because here is what you need to know:

To get a Twitter account go to http://twitter.com/ and where it says "New to Twitter? Join today!"--you then (can you guess what is next?) join today! You can then "tweet" about events and whatnot. Also, to connect to the class you need to use a hashtag--the symbol that looks like a tic-tac-toe grid--and put Comms239 after it (#Comms239). Today, there were some humorous tweets about class, such as the following:

"Can we go on a class field trip to "the creepiest place on earth" in South Korea?"--Jason Ludlow (a fellow       student of ours mentioned having gone to a part of South Korea where it was pretty similar to North Korea and was the originator of this tweeters quote.

"This is not a negative comment"--Ian Jones

"I'm taking a quiz and being encouraged to tweet at the same time. This is awesome."--Jessica Swenson

Also, another part that one needs to know for this class is how to use  http://tinyurl.com/. This site provides us with a tool that shortens our often lengthy url links that we post on twitter. Don't worry about me not explaining this site because it is pretty much self explanatory.

Even though I am of the generation that is almost entirely engulfed in technology at just about every aspect of our lives, I am not one who generally supports Twitter. To me, it is a waste of time and detrimental to personal security--not to mention to our lives and the way that we communicate. This next site explains this and tells us five things that we can do to balance our lives in the world of social media networks. The five tips are:

"Restrict membership to three or four social media networks 

Interact as if still living in the year 2005

Set an annual budget for the purchase handheld electronic devices, whether for work or pleasure, of .5% of gross annual income

Turn off handheld electronic devices while interacting with other human beings, driving a motor vehicle, and at the cinema or theater

Attend a 12 step program"

http://alvinstarkman.suite101.com/social-media-networks--facebook-twitter--destroying--society-a378038

or in tinyurl format: http://tinyurl.com/62lb9ga

The Generals in the "War of Words"

On one of the powerpoint slides in class were two collumns. One collumn listed "Federalists" and the other listed "Anti-Federalists". Upon seeing this, I had immediate flashbacks to my high school AP US History class where I learned that a federalist is one who supports the distribution of power between the people and the government. However, in class on Tuesday it came to my realization that that might have been the Federalist belief, but the government and those of the media world during that time did use the media to influence the people of their political ideologies.

John Fenno, editor and publisher or the "Gazette of the United States", acted as a major figure in the late 18th century. One may even call him a general in the "war of words" that he helped to lead during a time when partisan press exploded and turned from a few intellectual's opinions to real change in the American political system.

Another general in the "War of words" was Phillip Freneau. He was an Anti-Federalist (a person who was against the US Consititution as it did not contain a Bill of Rights and because they believe in the concept of the central government being equal to or inferior to a state government). Freneau served the American people as the editor of the "National Gazette" and has gone down in history as the "poet of the American Revolution". Often he took part in the partisan press on the right-leaning side of Jeffersonian Democracy.

Fenno and Freneau may have been two opposing generals in the "war of words", but they became leading figures in the partisan press which helped to mold and shape American politics.

Link on John Fenno: http://www.personal.psu.edu/sah6/Fenno.html
Link on Philip Freneau: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/freneau.html;