Shannon's Response Paper

[Shannon M.]

Hello,

I have attached my response paper to share and have also copied it below in case that is easier to view.

Sincerely,
Shannon

Chapter 4 Response Paper: Language and the Media

One of the goals most relevant to this chapter that I have for students in my classroom is to further understand the power of language in the media’s communication with them. Regardless of their paths beyond high school, students will become citizens who make choices about the channels from which they reap information and perspective on the world. Regardless of beliefs or political preferences, responsible citizenship requires that individuals make those choices in an informed manner, and this chapter covers many of the reasons I feel so strongly about this for my students.

While establishing that “ideologies can be constructed, sustained and re-iterated over a long period of time” (Mooney and Evans 64), one of the first segments of the chapter mentioned our society’s 24-hour news culture in which we can turn on the news at any time, a culture that provides ample airtime for the establishment and maintenance of particular ideologies. As I rarely have time to turn on a news channel on television at home, I think of this especially when I run at the gym and find myself confronted with a wall of television screens, many broadcasting news reports. This becomes especially interesting to watch when two channels often cover the same story at the same time and viewers can easily note the differences in how each presents its message—much like the text’s discussion of the synonymous names of the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare (Mooney and Evans 69). Moreover, I often think about the way this expanded airtime lowers the faithfulness to relevancy and necessity. I am sure that others join me in cringing at the communication and language used by some reporters and hosts in an effort to fill the airwaves in much the same way that my freshmen sometimes write to fill the lines of a paper and feign a thoughtful paragraph. On the 24-hour news channel, clarity becomes over-discussed and responsible journalism borders obsession with trauma and tragedy.

For one reason or another, I often bring up this fact in my high school classroom, asking my students to imagine a time in which—if they were waiting to catch the news about an event or individual—they would have to wait until the evening to do so. I ask them to consider the effects of 24/7 coverage of a tragedy such as a school shooting: What information goes beyond what is necessary? Who defines what is necessary for you to know? What do you think is necessary to know? I used to explore these questions at length while reading Dave Cullen’s non-fiction novel Columbine (2009) with my eleventh grade AP Language classes. A journalist who was present and reporting at the scene on the horrific April day in 1999, Cullen participated in and witnessed firsthand the effects of the media coverage on the unfolding of the story itself, and as coverage continued, it truly became just that—a story. As he describes in the book, over the next ten years Cullen revisited and researched the tragedy and its coverage, piecing together a chilling illustration of the way in which a thing examined becomes another version of itself. Exposing the detrimental practices of his career field, Cullen makes the case for the media’s mishandling of the tragedy from the first reporters on the scene through the years after.

How do we then differentiate between what is necessary and informative and what becomes entertainment and a dangerous vehicle for “‘manufacturing consent’” (Fairclough qtd. in Mooney and Evans 64)? Ironically, we seem to be obsessed with both excess and access to succinct information. Within seconds of opening CNN's home web page, a pop-up ask me if I would like today's news summarized for me by their “Five Things You Need to Know Today” portion of the site. Why wouldn’t I want to be informed? Are these tastes of top stories just enough to inform me without providing too much bias, or are they the opposite—just enough to suggest certain ideologies without suggesting the necessity that I read further? I have criticized 24-hour news, but is less more? This links to the text’s discussion of citizen journalism, the phenomenon born of the social media era, a new tendency to distrust the experts, and a craving for immediate, real, even live-tweeted news reports. On this subject, I suggest the possibility that—regardless of its immediacy and proximity to real events, victims, witnesses—citizen journalism falls prey to the same illnesses as the journalism surrounding Columbine nearly twenty years ago: a distortion of observed events and an inability to separate from inherent biases. Media institutions certainly wield more power in constructing ideologies through their resources, but individuals now wield a similar power as social media places them in a position to contribute. I cannot decide whether I believe that contribution to be more of a benefit or a detriment to our receiving of accurate, factual, useful news.

Discussion Questions:
Do you think the development of news reporting from a more limited frame to our current 24-hour news culture has had any effect on the use of language in the communication of news stories?
Is there any unbiased way to frame “Five Things You Need to Know Today” in today’s news?
How have you seen your personal intake of news change over the past ten years?

Works Cited
Mooney, Annabelle, and Betsy Evans. Language, Society, and Power: An Introduction. 4th ed., Routledge, 2015.

[Haiyan C.]

Hi, Shannon!
I am very glad to answer your questions. The first question ,compared with the US news broadcast programs, such as 24-hour news service, China's news reporting platform, the most authoritative and most influential is the news broadcast program "Xinwenlianbo"of China Central Television. It is a daily news program broadcast by China Central Television every night. It is called "the weather vane of China's political arena". The purpose of the program is "to publicize the voice of the party and the government and spread the world's major events." Compared with the different reports of the US News on Obama's medical reform, China's news reports are highly political and the reporting methods are more objective. Compared with traditional media, such as traditional media like paper media, Internet media appears to be more random. To a certain extent, they also lead some netizens' ideas ,it also created the emergence of a number of network hot words.
The second one,"Five Things You Need to Know in today’s news is similar to CCTV's "News 30’",the program focuses on domestic and international news, topical news and culture news.I think this is a good way for us to use a more professional perspective to pick some of the more important news events that should be known to us in the so much daily news. More similar to this is the news push on Internet such as website, applications, Weibo, WeChat public account, it is more to use mega data to calculate the hot news that we should know, but it generally has a fatal problem, that is reports are subjective, and some websites may attract eyeballs use some sensational news headlines, and the content may be inaccurate.
The last question, I think the biggest personal impact on the news in the past ten years is that the way the news is reported has changed in an innovative way, no longer sticking to the traditional way of reporting news.First, the media has changed the way of news written, innovated in writing techniques, striving for novelty in language, image, be closer to the masses, used the language of the masses to convey information, and makes readers refreshed.Second, media strive to embody a large amount of information in simple words. With the fast pace of modern life, people are pursuing high efficiency and high information capacity.In order to gurantee readers can get the information they need in a short time, the media need to compress the layout to present the news facts to the reader most intuitively, quickly and efficiently.
These are my thougts. Hope sincerely these would work.

[Haiyan C.]

Hi, Shannon!
I am very glad to answer your questions. The first question ,compared with the US news broadcast programs, such as 24-hour news service, China's news reporting platform, the most authoritative and most influential is the news broadcast program "Xinwenlianbo"of China Central Television. It is a daily news program broadcast by China Central Television every night. It is called "the weather vane of China's political arena". The purpose of the program is "to publicize the voice of the party and the government and spread the world's major events." Compared with the different reports of the US News on Obama's medical reform, China's news reports are highly political and the reporting methods are more objective. Compared with traditional media, such as traditional media like paper media, Internet media appears to be more random. To a certain extent, they also lead some netizens' ideas ,it also created the emergence of a number of network hot words.
The second one,"Five Things You Need to Know in today’s news is similar to CCTV's "News 30’",the program focuses on domestic and international news, topical news and culture news.I think this is a good way for us to use a more professional perspective to pick some of the more important news events that should be known to us in the so much daily news. More similar to this is the news push on Internet such as website, applications, Weibo, WeChat public account, it is more to use mega data to calculate the hot news that we should know, but it generally has a fatal problem, that is reports are subjective, and some websites may attract eyeballs use some sensational news headlines, and the content may be inaccurate.
The last question, I think the biggest personal impact on the news in the past ten years is that the way the news is reported has changed in an innovative way, no longer sticking to the traditional way of reporting news.First, the media has changed the way of news written, innovated in writing techniques, striving for novelty in language, image, be closer to the masses, used the language of the masses to convey information, and makes readers refreshed.Second, media strive to embody a large amount of information in simple words. With the fast pace of modern life, people are pursuing high efficiency and high information capacity.In order to gurantee readers can get the information they need in a short time, the media need to compress the layout to present the news facts to the reader most intuitively, quickly and efficiently.
These are my thougts. Hope sincerely these would work.