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/