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| Quriosity Garcia Grade 11, CHS |
By Quriosity Garcia
Junior Classman, Staff Writer for the CHS Viking Journal
The CHS newspaper crew visited UMPI to attend a seminar that featured well-respected media professionals Dr. Jacqui Lowman, Darrell Dorgan, Shawn Cunningham and Jen Lynds. We attended the seminar not only because of what a fortunate opportunity it was but for the chance of learning what real journalism is all about. We learned a great deal about what it takes to be a journalist and what it means to be a part of the ‘big leagues’ of journalism. It was also an opportunity to learn what news has potentially come to. At this seminar I actually had the chance to ask these knowledgeable journalists what exactly journalism has come to today.
Not pertaining to the local newspapers but to the national or highly paid news broadcasters such as ABC, NBC, CNN, etc. We all know what the news was made for — it was created to inform the public about what is happening in their town, their state and in their country, in the world, but then we reached a new creation — yellow journalism.
Created in the 1900s the progressive era, journalists needed to get to the people, even if that meant stretching the truth. During World War I and WW II there was propaganda to anger citizens and support the war for false reasons. Newspapers gave the image that the ‘enemy’ was raping innocent women, that they were like killing machines — was that true? Or was the truth stretched?
If you look at the latest headlines in the most well-known and respected news channels will you not see who just named their baby Blue IV? Will you not see who decided to get out of their car without the proper undergarments on? And will you not see the same types of headlines in TMZ or from some blogger that, went to Walmart and bought a camera and a laptop?
It is an issue that is reaching its boiling point, leaving the question that is on all of our minds — “where should we really go to find the real news? Who can we trust? There is no doubt that local newspapers are quite trustworthy because you know what their true intention is — to inform.
What else do you see in the headlines these days? School shootings, shooting in Arizona, women stalked from supermarkets and murdered in their home. Are people becoming more violent and insane? Or, are news reporters taught to ‘leave the station with a mic and a camera, even if all they have is a video of a person saying, “you better get that camera out of my face,” that just might make the news that night. It is a re-occurring theme that the news is getting increasingly more urgent, but doesn’t that leave more room for error — the story changes everyday as more leads come in.
This is what we learned when went to UMPI. We realized this — we are entering a new age. An age of technology where anyone can report the news. Anyone can tape “the breaking news of the night” and post it on YouTube or Facebook. Due to all of these bloggers and sources of the news and information we have an abundance of locations in which we can locate news. It is now up to the reader — the viewer — to decide where to find it and whether or not to believe it.
