JOUR1111 Blog 11, Lecture 11, Monday 28th May

Quite simply the last lecture was my favourite, and not just for the obvious reason. It felt by far the most relevant to me. I may never be a word changing sophisticated journalist but getting online to share my knowledge, opinions and (questionable) humour is what really excites me. It doesn’t take long to look at my body of work and see where my interest lies; I, with no shame, want to write about music. That’s my attraction to journalism, the fact it gives you this power to work with what interests you. I spend my days blasting friends, family and randoms with my deconstructions of music. A lot of the time it’s all I want to do; discuss, muse and share my opinions of music. And above all I want to entertain people while I do it. I want people to want to read what I write. The thing is I know there is a place for that; I have a whole stack of heroes who inhabit the internet doing what I want to do so I know I can. 

JOUR1111 Blog 11, Lecture 11, Monday 21st May

Investigative journalism is petrifying. From the outside it seems that every aspect of it is riddled with danger and hard work; everything is against you. The very nature of investigative journalism is you’re attempting to find out something that someone doesn’t want you to know. You can be sued, shunned, arrested, defamed or hurt and yet somehow this all makes it feel more glamorous. Investigative journalism appeals to peoples’ sense of righteousness. It is the outsider’s method of combatting the injustices of the world and that’s what makes it great. There is a definite power fantasy that goes along with people’s desire to be investigative journalists; it allows someone to put their social conscience above everything else. People want to change the world; they want to be a martyr for their cause and this gives them their means.

As much as I see the attraction I don’t think I could ever be an investigative journalist. As I said it is petrifying.  I think I’m too non-confrontational which makes me shit scared of pissing anyone off. It also begs the question of whether one person has the right to decide what should be known by the public. Lies and secrets aren’t necessarily bad things (that said they frequently aren’t good things), they can be to protect or help people and exposing them could be harmful. Anyway I’m really just making excuses for my inability to ask the hard questions and it’s all the nature of the beast so long live investigative journalism.  

JOUR1111 Blog 10, Lecture 10, Monday 14th May

I care about Masterchef, I have an opinion on Nick D’arcy’s right to hold a gun and I think that the biggest variation in party policy in Australia is gay marriage; am I simple and ignorant with a limited view of the world? Yes. But it also has a hell of a lot to do with agenda setting our lecture served to illustrate. These issues are the ones that get high attention from the media and in turn garner importance from me. How am I meant to know about atrocities on the other side of the world when I am being fed on a diet of what sells, it is only natural to think that the things that get attention are important. 

   

While I admit to being merely a plebe at the mercy of the industry when it comes to what to think about (first level agenda setting) I do like to take the high and mighty stance of being above being told what I think about these issues (second level agenda setting). I think possibly people on the whole are a lot less susceptible to this due to their contrary nature. In my experience people like to oppose what they are being told (although maybe all my friends are just jerks) particularly when it’s by the establishment. For every person jumping on the Kony 2012 bandwagon there were just as many laughing it in the face for no other reason than to spite the others. I am not here to argue with the agenda setting, its effects are irrefutable, but just to note that it’s far from the be all and end all on the public’s opinions.

Oscar + Martin/Order 66

In a display of terrible unprofessionalism I’m about to write two of the briefest and least founded reviews I ever hope to write. Thankfully, though, I’m not professional in any manner of the word and am therefore not bound by any standard of quality (also I’m lazy).

On the night of Saturday the 28^th I headed out to the city with a group of people for a friend’s 18^th. The whole night was a confusing mess of a journey but in the interests of brevity and relevance I’ll isolate my ramblings to the more ‘musical’ side of the night.

A drunken text from the birthday boy gave us instructions to meet him at a club, or bar, or some other venue that an 18-year-old can try and fill their body cavity with overpriced alcohol on a Saturday night. On the way to said alcohol dispensary we passed a motley looking lot of safety pinned, leather jacketed, cheaply hair dyed punks milling around a dingy looking stairway, like some sort of anachronistic 70s throwback (albeit much more middle aged than a typical 70s punk crowd). This sort of crowd alone is enough to have drawn me in, but it seems that my friends do not share the same taste in seedy middle aged punks. I did manage to stall long enough to Google the event on my phone’s infuriatingly lacklustre internet and find out that they were attending the album launch for a local Brisbane punk band called “Order66”.But the bonds of kinship far outweigh my love of shitty punk music so on to the 18^th we headed.   

We arrived at the “The Bridge Club” to find that there was a band we had never heard of playing inside and that it would cost us $15 to get in. While kinship may be stronger than my love of shitty punk, collectively we had to strongly consider if it was stronger than our love of not wasting money.  After reassurance that the band, now known to be “Oscar + Martin”, was good, and my own personal realisation that I could always write a review  of the show, we eventually forked over the cash, just in time to entirely miss the opening acts.  

After meeting up with the birthday group, we waited for the two men, who I can only assume are named Oscar and Martin, to take the stage. As we did this a friend silently pointed at the man in front of us, mouth agape. My confusion quickly turned to astonishment as I recognised that I was standing next to the wild dancing man from the Splendour line-up video, he was even wearing the shoes from the video. After taking many group photos and fondling his beard he lifted up the birthday boy and made the whole crowd sing him happy birthday.

This event conveniently filled the silence while the two men tried to sort out their gear on stage where they seemed to be having some difficulty with the sound guys. When they finally started up we were hit with warm synth fuzz, pulsing programmed drums and RnB vocals. While definitively indie (the crowd’s outfits were a dead giveaway) it was constructed from a very original amalgamation of genres which gave the style definition of its own. Unfortunately that didn’t stop the song from feeling bland and boring with a lack of direction.  And then, during one of the singers many ventures into the realms of falsetto, disaster struck (slight overstatement). Feedback hit us thick and fast, its unbearable screech filling out ears like molten lead (slight over-dramatisation). The sound guy immediately pulled the plug on the microphone but from that point on whenever they tried to give the singer any volume the feedback crept back in and they were forced to turn him back down again (entirely accurate boring sentence). Without any discernable vocals their next song, which would have otherwise been a middle of the road, indie, synth track, turned into a quite engaging trance song. To give credit where it’s due, that’s versatility.

At this point a friend and I had a debate over whether you could classify the music as shoegaze. In an attempt to settle it I stared at my shoes during the next song, to great success. We came to the conclusion that while not traditionally shoegaze it was not inappropriate to describe it as such. We also concluded that we had no desire to listen to anything resembling shoegaze, particularly with the sound issues still continuing to control the show, so we gathered the troops together and, slightly apprehensively, headed down the road to “Fat Louie’s” where we had seen the milling punks earlier.

Upstairs we were met by dim lights, questionable cleaning standards and a small gaggle of nihilistic punks on the dance floor. In the corner of said floor were “Order 66” screaming their lungs out above their cacophony of crash cymbals and pounding power chords. “Finally some real music,” proclaimed the birthday boy as we dodged the multitude of stomping “DocMartens” which were the footwear of choice for the footwear of choice for the modern moshing masses. While it doesn’t feel entirely correct to agree with his statement, there is something to be said of the raw energy of Order 66 compared to the refined and subdued music of Oscar + Martin. Of course my own personal biases towards Order 66’s blend of 80s style hardcore punk mixed with the pop and ska punk of the 90s entirely void my comparative opinion. There is, though, some merit in the fact that, even though I was only present for about 4 songs, I had more fun in at this free concert from an unknown band in a scungy bar amongst these middle aged, era confused, counter culture cretins (I may have just been overly harsh on them in my desire for alliteration) than I have had on so many other nights out.  

JOUR1111 Blog 9, Lecture 9, Monday 30th April

This week’s lecture is on news values. What I gathered is that news values are the defining features of what something needs to be to be news worthy. The lecture broke these values into impact, audience identification, pragmatics and source influence. I really love the definitive nature of this because I’m the sort of person who likes defined rules for things, at least so I know when I’m breaking them, and these four points make a really good checklist for knowing what’s worth writing about. As if to illustrate the functionality of these values a friend of mine was telling me just the other day that he will read anything provided it is about “The World’s Something-iest Something”. This may serve as the most single minded demonstration of the attraction of impact.

At the same time these values do show the consumerist nature of the news. Its purpose in the end is to sell and for this to happen is has to be what people want, it has to entertain them in some manner and these values really do play to that need.  No matter how large, relevant or important the news if it doesn’t adhere to the values people don’t want to hear about it and it may never see the light of day. The overall effect of this phenomenon seems to me to be a remarkable focus on samey, pop news which is relatively minor in the scale of things.

But really is that such a bad thing; I’m painting consumerism in news in a negative light I realise but since when is ignorance a sin and furthermore who am I to decide. People are interested in what interests them (I state in a wondrous piece of redundancy).  It makes perfect sense for people to only want to hear what they care about and what’s your integrity worth if no one is paying any attention to it. This point brings us full circle, it’s not news unless someone cares and that’s why we have news values; to say what people care about. 

Annotated Bibliography

Obama seeks leverage off gay-marriage endorsement, heads to more fundraisers. (2012). Retrieved from Foxnews.com website: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/14/obama-heads-to-commencement-fundraisers-to-backdrop-gay-marriage-decision/

The article does not explicitly state who wrote it but does say that "The Associated Press contributed to this report." Associated Press's position as a long running, worldwide, independent, not-for-profit cooperative should ensure that the source information is accurate (Ekstrand, V. S. 2009). Fox News, conversely, are notoriously right wing and oppose such issues as same-sex marriage (Fleming, J. J. 2012) and are likely to manipulate information to represent these views.  This article chose to focus on the negative electoral implications of President Obama's support of gay marriage by way of implied comparison between the social focus of the Democrat's campaign and the economic focus of the Republicans'. Fox painted Obama's decision in a negative light, implying it was a purely politically motivated move by only discussing it as such and then using various statistics and sources to devalue it as a political move.  Fox uses the opinions of former Democratic strategist, Kirsten Powers, to support their case thereby distancing themselves from their well-known Republican bias. The article cleverly downplays the moral issues of the subject matter in favour of a political angle successfully criticising Obama's stance. 

Endo, S. (2012, May 12). African-American voters react to President Obama's shift on shift on same sex marriage, CNN. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsG4p0RPZ24

Sandra Endo's CNN TV news report is focused around African-American Christians' reaction to Obama's support of Same Sex Marriage. Led by the opinions of Reverend Ralph Martino of the First Church of Washington, the report suggested that black voters, in particular, are disapproving of same-sex marriage. These opinions contrast CNN's own generally pro-liberal stance (War & American Society. 2005) The Reverend states that such an institution contradicts scripture and that they are concerned with the decisions of the President they formerly supported. He then consolidates this by saying that this will not sway the votes of the vast majority of his congregation but instead they will pray that he sees the error of his ways. Such matters of opinion have very little room for conjecture. Endo then uses collected data to show that while opposition to same-sex marriage is higher in the black community such opposition is lessening. This leads to a secondary focus of the report looking at how Obama's decision will affect the voting of the black community where through questioning the public and through use of expert Johnathon Rauch, Endo suggests there will be very little change in the voting of the public in wake of the decision. CNN's report focused on showing the opinions of a select demographic and did not push a political or moral agenda in favour of focusing on a social angle. 

Baker, P., & Sussman, D. (2012, May 14). Obama’s Switch on Same-Sex Marriage Stirs Skepticism, The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/us/politics/poll-sees-obama-gay-marriage-support-motivated-by-politics.html

Working as a pair, author, Peter Baker, and polling editor, Dalia Sussman, bring considerable political knowledge to this New York Times article. Baker in particular, being a leading reporter as far back as the Lewinsky scandal, is well versed in political happenings. This coupled with the wide held view of The New York Times as a trustworthy and respectable provider of quality journalism (Mihal, C. 2012) makes for a credible and informed article. Like the Fox News article the focus lies on the political implications of Obama’s decision. The two authors wrote next to none of their own opinions relying entirely on statistics and quotes as evidence to build their article. Through the use of these statistics and quotes they showed it is a held opinion that due to the manner in which Obama’s decision was released it came off as being more politically calculated than principled. Following this they then moved to show that while same-sex marriage is a dividing issue for the American public it holds very little weight over the voters’ decisions, being considered well behind the economy by the masses. 

Hagerty, B. (2011). Apocalypse soon? British Journalism Review, 22(1), 3-4. doi:          10.1177/0956474810403035      

In this editorial Bill Hagerty gives his opinion on looming end of proffesional journalism in the face of ethical controversies surrounding the media. As a long time journalist, director of the London Press Club and editor of the British Journalism Review, Hagerty is well qualified to discuss the subject. He opens by saying that while the public may have been unaware of the ethical crisis it is well known amongst those involved with politics and law. He goes on to discuss that while underhanded acts have always been a part of journalism, comparing modern phone hacking to bribing a telex officer for information, the public is now far more sceptical and less willing to accept questionable ethics. “The old guidelines have been swept away,” says Hagerty, in relation to what journalists can now get away with.  The article closes with a discussion of the destructive effects of this change on journalism and the need for a standard to be established for its survival citing various examples. This oddly candid and casual admission of nefarious behavior amongst the media seems damaging but in wake of recent ethical revelations takes a back seat to journalism’s struggle for survival.

("CNN," 2005; Ekstrand, 2009; Fleming, 2012; Mihal, 2012)

References

. CNN. (2005) War & American Society. Thousand Oaks, USA: 'SAGE Publications'.

Ekstrand, V. S. (2009). Associated Press Encyclopedia of Journalism. Thousand Oaks, USA.

Fleming, J. J. (2012). Fox News Encyclopedia of Journalism. Thousand Oaks, USA.

Mihal, C. (2012). The New York Times Encyclopedia of Journalism. Thousand Oaks, USA: 'SAGE Publications'.

JOUR1111 Blog 8, Lecture 8, Monday 23rd April

Well I actually showed up to the lecture today, how novel. Unfortunately I picked the wrong week because, as I write, I’m currently being berated, along with the rest of the class, by Doctor Harrison, who has just spent the lecture, up till now, generally being a dick. By the brief snippets of egotism that are seamlessly inserted between relevant discussion I take it that he is important and well learned but I hardly think that justifies such subpar character.

Somewhat ironically, or perhaps fittingly, today’s lecture is on ethics. We were shown a whole selection of different ads of questionable ethics and asked to rate them on tastefulness and ethicality. Well supposedly questionable; I personally didn’t take offense to any of the advertisements but maybe that’s just part of being a desensitised teenager.

After this Doctor Harrison went on to discuss ethical paradigms and the briefly onto different codes of ethics surrounding different organisations. I can’t remember the three paradigms but I do remember the ever righteous Doctor making audacious comments about his particular favoured choice being the only ethically sound model and imploring us to read his book so we can all bask in his vast wisdom.

This blog mightn’t contain much substance in relation to what was actually discussed in the lecture but I feel this rant needed to be had to express just how much the good doctor’s unbearable personality overshone the content.