The News is a Treat

This week in class we took the time to watch 'Frontline New War: Part II.'
The movie covered everything from the beginning of the news era up until now and even a bit into what the future has in store. They discussed heavily how the news nowadays has gone soft, and the news reporters main priorities are not even reporting news. While I can understand and agree with this concept to a point, seeing as how today's media is so obsessed with celebrity and fame, I also disagree in many ways. For every 'soft' story in the news line up there are at least 5 tragic ones to make up for that. I do not think that our time and effort should be put into investigating the celebrity cases before the real news, but I also do not think it is killing the news media to include it.

The video also said that due to profit motivation a lot of the news has lost it's sincerity. Once again, this is a concept that I full acknowledge but I do not think it is so cut and dry like that. Obviously we are aware that more or less everything these days revolves around money. However, just because a company sponsors a television show or station, does not mean we must then like and buy that product. It is a bit more enticing to  us when it is shoved in our face, but it is up to us as the intelligent viewers to make up our own minds about things.

The topic that was discussed that I was the most interested in was "info snacking." I am for sure a big time snacker. I cannot even tell you how many times I have sat down at the computer to do one simple task and 5 hours later still be on the computer, and probably not even with the first task fully completed. For those who do not know what info snacking is, NPR did a little blurb about it that I think fairly describes it's entire entity. With all the new and emerging technology out there, as well as social networking sites, it's nearly inevitable that everyone has "infosnacked" at one point or another. StumbleUpon is a wonderful site to start up your info snacking.

That being said, it's about time I wrap this up and get to snacking.