Martin and the Media

Over a year after the controversial, fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on a dark, rainy February night, there has been no mass amounts of analysis of the situation, or live coverage, or even that many articles about the shooting. But the shooting, which was the biggest news story for the week or so after it happened, is no less important now than it was a year ago. The media, however, no longer prioritizes this important, almost monumental event in their news coverage. This, to me, is indicative of how the media shapes what news is and is not relevant - a pattern that has been the case for a while.

For those of you who don't know about the case, I will give a brief description that by no means is sufficient to sum up the story. One night, Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, was walking home from the store and was approached by a volunteer watchman. The watchman, George Zimmerman, thought Martin was acting suspicious is his wealthy, gated community. Zimmerman then fatally shot Martin (if you want to learn in more detail about the story, go here).

After the shooting, the news exploded with tons of different accounts of the story, supposed facts about the case, and certainly opinions about the motive of the shooting and if Zimmerman was justified in killing Trayvon. Though this case is very intricate and complex, I think that the media's response to the story is just as important as the story itself.

Dylan Stableford, Senior Media Reporter for Yahoo! thinks this case exposed the worst in the media: "The Trayvon Martin case has exposed some of the media's worst tendencies - selective editing, rushing to judgement, stoking anger for ratings and pageviews". The word "selective" indicates that the media only portrays certain parts of the case, in order to make the story seem more interesting to the audience. Tendencies like misrepresenting a story for "pageviews" and "ratings" are clearly horrible tactics the media uses to gain popularity.

And after a week, fua, as Oscar Wao would say. It is gone. No more constant coverage of the story, hourly updates, you will rarely even see any kind of story on it. Do you think that the media does a correct job covering all stories fair and equally? Is it legitimate for them to alter stories so they are more popular and make more money? I certainly do not think so, but please share your thoughts.

Obama Pardons 17

Our class discussions about racism and how it is present in the justice system sparked my interest in how apparent it really is in daily life. Although in class we talked about black protesters from the Civil Rights Movement getting sentenced to long prison sentences for trespassing, just recently Obama pardoned seventeen people for non-violent crimes. The crimes that the newly-pardoned people committed were far different from the "crimes" that protesters did during the Civil Rights Movement. But I think that it still shows that our country is at the very least trying not to make the same mistakes we made in the past.

Obama pardoned seventeen people recently after committing minor crimes from almost decades ago, such as "falsely altering a U.S. money order" or even "acquiring food stamps without authorization". I think that there is a consensus that these crimes are not big enough to the extent that the person who committed it is in jail for over a decade. That just seems outrageous. But that is a clear connection back to the CRM, when authorities would press charges on protesters for whatever charge they could press. For instance, since protesting was not a crime, they would charge them for trespassing on property.

But I don't think that pardoning people for acquiring food stamps falsely is anywhere on the same level as for protesting racial inequality. So although Obama is taking a step in the right direction by pardoning people for petty offenses, there is still a lot of work to be done to make the justice system equal.

Work and Wages

In the wealthiest nation on Earth today, there is debate over how much money people deserve for doing certain jobs. The current minimum wage requires that each person gets at least $7.25. Obama wants to raise the wage up to $9.00. What the raise in wage would signify wouldn't just be a physical increase in cash in people's pocket, it seems to me it would raise the value of people who work lower level jobs.

Before I get into that, it is interesting that the US didn't have a minimum wage until the end of World War II. Before then, the Supreme Court ruled it Unconstitutional to impose a federal minimum wage because it infringed upon the workers' rights to determine the work they do. As the years went by, the minimum wage eventually got instituted after FDR instituted the minimum wage. FDR thought that the "government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages." The word "must" to me indicates an obligation to the people that the government must help them using this law.

As the years passed, the wage increased more and more. And now the debate is on again - to raise it higher. To me, without a minimum wage, it would show that the government has no problem letting people in the lower class who can only work at certain places fall into poverty. Without a minimum wage, hard-working Americans would make no money after hours of strenuous work.

But some think that not having a minimum wage would be helpful. The theory is that when you raise the cost of employment, there is less incentive for businesses to hire.

What do you think about a raise in the minimum wage? Would it have a positive or negative effect on the people and our economy? Or do we even need a minimum wage?

False Progression in America

Recently, the trend of shootings, whether with a high or low death toll, has increased. The Sandy Hook shooting and the shooting at Lone Star College in Texas are two that were well covered by the media. However, what most of you probably don't know is that between January 10th and January 31st, there were eight shootings at different schools. The event that triggered debates about gun laws was the horrific Sandy Hook shooting. But months after that crisis, there is no resolution on curbing violence.

What people in America think is that our country is getting better. Our economy is improving, there are no imminent dangers that are being pushed to the public, and it seems as if people pay little attention to shootings. But this is all part of the false progression theory - the public isn't aware of  certain issues, and they therefore think that nothing is wrong.

But clearly, there are major problems in the US when it comes to curbing gun violence. But since the public isn't getting these events shoved down their throats, they do not pay attention to it. Is this the fault of the media? Since the school shootings aren't as big as the Sandy Hook shooting, the media is not providing coverage on those issues. Should they be?

With media coverage aside, are Americans stuck in a mindset of false progression? Why or why not?

The Gun Paradox

Just today, the most prestigious US military sniper, Chris Kyle, was killed. The cause? Not an illness, or a car accident. No. He was shot by an Iraq and Afghanistan military veteran at a shooting range.

I think that this example sets up a clear paradox about guns and their usage. The first is that a man who dedicated his life to killing other people with guns ended up being killed by a gun. To me, Chris seemed to think of himself as almost invincible from the negative consequences of guns, especially given the title of his autobiography, "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History". The word "lethal" to me indicates that he is deadly at what he does. That is magnified by the word "most" because it means more than anyone else. However, the most lethal sniper was killed by his weapon.

The second is that Kyle was shot at a firing range. He brought a military veteran to go to the range to shoot guns with him in order to "bring some relief". To relieve stress, Kyle took the veteran to a shooting range. I think that is another paradox because to me, shooting guns have a negative connotation. I feel this way because I have never been exposed to a gun before, and quite frankly, they scare me. A gun has so much force and power that I feel as if I am not responsible enough. If I were to go to the shooting range it certainly would not be to let out steam.

What I am trying to get at is that gun usage is very two-sided. In other words, Kyle killed people with his guns, but got killed himself by one. How do we, as Americans, suppress or alter gun usage so that horrible events like these don't happen anymore? Are guns embedded in American society to the extent that a change in policy is unforeseeable? Why or why not?

The Show Must Go On

Mike Daisey’s continuation of his theater show after admitting that he was lying is an important contemporary artifact because it demonstrates the tendency of Americans to put morals and facts aside and focus on pure profit. This drive for profit has been embedded in Americans throughout all the time periods that we have studied.

Daisey’s show outlines horrific working conditions and specific stories from workers in one of Apple’s supposed Chinese sweatshops. However, after investigation by reporters, Daisey was forced to come out and admit that the show is just a piece of "theater", and not wholly true. Daisey’s use of the word “theater” indicates that it is merely an attempt to please the audience, not provide facts of a certain situation. A theater show, for example, can act out the brutality and chilling times of the Holocaust, without providing one hundred percent accuracy in its stories.

Daisey’s directors go on to describe that “art is different than journalism.” Art is a form of expression where an artist creates something based on their emotions and understanding of a certain situation. Journalism, in contrast, is limited to providing cold hard facts to a certain audience. A journalist, for example, could detail the horrors of a certain sweat shop and quote the workers about what they go through. An artist, on the other hand, could paint that same worker with blood and tears running over his body. The distinction between art and journalism, though seemingly small, is a clear indication that Daisey fabricated certain parts of his show purely to attract audiences, and ultimately gain profit. The fact that Daisey’s shows continued to run despite being proven false is a clear indication that Daisey just wants his show to make money.

The theme of making money is still present in the modern day. In Mr. O’Connor’s blog post, Polling Matters, he reminds us that “media outlets are businesses.” A business is a company or shop that focuses on buying or selling products in order to make money. The cigarette business, for example, exemplifies that they care only that people buy their product so that they make money, and care less about the negative health issues associated with it.

The drive for profit was clear even during the Salem witch trials. The Englishmen who landed in Salem were “motivated mainly by a hunt for profit” (Crucible 5). The idea of profit is still present during this time period. Profit, as you know, is a drive to make money. The word “hunt” is not only foreshadowing the witch-hunt that ensued in Salem, but also indicates that people are willing to go to extreme lengths to make money. A dog hunts for squirrels so that it has something to eat, similarly to how people hunt for profit. A hunt, to me, indicates that a person will go to all lengths, even kill someone or something, to get what they want. This demonstrates that people will do whatever it takes to get money.

During the Civil War, the drive for profit was also a top priority for most people: “Auctions of slaves took place at public slave markets” (Foner 380). An auction is a place where people sell their goods (or in this case, slaves) for the highest amount of money possible. This is a clear suggestion that the drive for money was preceded morals. During the Civil War, Southerners put morals aside and did all they could to make money.

Throughout the times in history we have studied, the theme of profit preceding morals and common sense has been present, but as they say, the show must go on.

Forced Labor in China

A couple weeks ago, we had numerous class discussions about modern forms of slavery. We listened to a very intense poem called "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky, and we were then assigned to write a poem or story about modern day slavery in a certain country or factory. Before the assignment, I had never thought much of forced labor, and how big of a role it plays in the American society. A shockingly high 98% of the clothes in America have been imported from other countries, according to ABCNews.  But the problem isn't that we import too much, it's that what we import is made by slave labor in other countries.

Recently, I found a story that details the life of a slave in a factory in Masanjia, China. The story was discovered when a woman and her husband opened a box of Halloween decorations to decorate their house. But when they opened the box, they found more than just the decorations, they found this:



In the letter, a woman from the Masanji Forced Labor camp in China begs whoever opens the item to alert the World Human Rights Assocation about the cruel violations that occur daily. She works fifteen hours a day, gets zero days off. If a worker tries to get a day off, they "will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark". And they only make $1.61 a month.

Yes, the details are horrid, and yes, we should all go out of our way to make sure we stop things like this from happening. But a larger impact would be the impact that items made by slave labor would have on the US companies that sell them. According to Title 19 Section 1307 of the US Code, any item made in a country by forced labor is not legally allowed to come in the US. If these laws were truly followed by the US, I would be interested to see how much of the products and goods we buy are made by forced slave labor.

After all of this, I have been left questioning: Are products made by slaves a part of the American society? Is there anything that we can do to ensure that we don't buy or support slave labor? I think that the Americans rely too much on cheap, slave-made goods in order to make a profit, and that most care more about money than suffering people in other countries. What do you think?