Media & Society-Week One

TOPIC 1: NEWSPAPERS

Most of the local news I get from Facebook, largely from posts on the ‘Albany Happenings’ page. There’s a lot of first-person reports from people on there (largely involving car accidents, fires, road hazards, etc.) but people also regularly post links to Democrat & Herald or Oregonian articles, which I usually read. Hasso Hering, a former newspaper editor and local resident, also posts his pieces about the goings-on in and around Albany there. I trust the reporting of the Democrat & Herald and Oregonian and take everything else on the page with a grain of salt. I also watch various OPB segments on occasion.

The Washington Post, my main source of news, gives you a free digital subscription if you have a student e-mail address, so while I’m technically a subscriber, I don’t pay for the subscription. The normal standard digital subscription is $9.99 a month and after having the student subscription, I would probably pay that if I had to in the future. For my other major source of news, The New York Times, my household does pay for a digital subscription and we pay $5 a month. The Guardian makes a point not to charge a subscription price but does ask for donations, which I have given a few times over the years. I’m happy to pay (or would pay) these amounts because I feel that the kind of journalism these newspapers provide is essential and honestly, it costs less a month than my Netflix subscription.

I would say I’m about at a 3. I would like to be more informed about local current events and could definitely make more of an effort to find that kind of information. However, whenever I get a ballot in the mail (something I wish more states did and one of the things I really appreciate now that I’ve moved back to Oregon), I do make sure that I research the people and legislation that are on it and vote. I feel like this allows me to be a lot more informed about what’s at stake politically on the local level, as opposed to how things were back in New York state, where sometimes the first time you even heard of a piece of legislation is when it’s there on the ballot with essentially no information as to what it’s about and there’s a line of 20 people behind you waiting to get into the booth (the local news was far more likely to cover crime, human interest stories, and national and global news than the ‘cut funds to libraries in rural counties’ or ‘tax increase on town water to fund road repairs’ bills). As far as general community information (cougar sighting in North Albany, someone’s trashed the Blessing Box…again, the giant duck is back on Waverly lake, etc), the ‘Albany Happenings’ page is pretty good.

TOPIC 2: FAKE NEWS 

While I do have serious concerns about the influence of corporate interests in the mass media, I personally don’t think that the President’s labeling of these companies is at all accurate. If anything, I feel like some of the news sources the President has shown approval of, such as Breitbart, are closer to the definition of ‘fake news’ as many of their claims are baseless or based on information that is largely inaccurate. This is far from a ‘right’ issue, my generally liberal friends on Facebook also post a number of articles from left-leaning publications that seem equally untrustworthy.

However, publications like The New York Times have strict journalistic standards and procedures to ensure the quality of their reporting.

I absolutely agree with the viewpoint that the President’s attacks on our press and journalists harms democracy by ignoring the First Amendment and eroding the public’s trust of those institutions. I always think it’s a bad sign when the nation’s leader (of any nation) casts aspersions on the free press. Convincing the populace that rather than journalists, they must only believe the State, is a step towards tyranny.

Honestly, I don’t feel like the President ever really ‘tells it like it is’, it seems like most of his statements he later contradicts himself or are based on spurious reasoning and misinformation. I feel like much of our media has a definite tendency towards sensationalism, which has a negative effect on our democracy (although, as addressed in the John Oliver segment, we as readers are more likely to gravitate towards these kind of stories, and the media is simply trying to keep our attention). I also think that the increasing level of oversight by an increasingly small number of corporate owners is worrisome for the future of journalism in our country. However, despite its flaws, I feel our free press is an essential and vital element of our democracy. As The Washington Post motto says, ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’.