Forwarding

The Vast Majority

As I go through my classmates’ different news sources I see that we as a class have a common “fall guy” as I like to put it. The majority of the class seems to be interested in searching the known news sites such as CNN, ABCNEWS, FOXNEWS, etc. It may be the fact that the lack of televisions on campus force students to go to these sites, or maybe the commonality or recognition that comes with these news sites give a comfort to students that they can trust the material they are getting from their trusted news site. This, however, I see as a misconception due to the fact that different sites/stations have their different approaches and biases.

Hedges and Carr would both see this as the fallout from the advancement of technology. Both would perceive these methods of getting the news as I interpret it as a sign of the times; less radio and television, and more surfing the internet and doing less research. With online news, the reader has the option of what they want to read about. The web page is organized so that instead of having to read the whole paper to find out what you wanted to know, now you can just look under the organized tab or column and search for the specific article you were searching for. Nevertheless, Thompson would see this as the advancement of the human mind to be able to organize a system that would assist people to find out what they were looking for as quickly as possible. The ability to find out about the world in a matter of seconds is a revelation that we are more civilized as a nation and have more information to indulge our minds into.

The fact of the matter in which I write this paragraph over shows the difference one class and chapter in a book can make. The reason why these news sources are popular are because we are forwarding the information given to us by different web pages, and word of mouth along. As you are reading this, I am forwarding to you what people have told me and doing what Hedges and Carr might see as adding to the downfall of human nature by the blogging and technological world.


I revised the whole last paragraph as I had a whole different aspect on how people got their news. Rather than see the obvious fact that the news is forwarded from one source or person to another, I was stating my idea as whoever is giving the news is the firsthand witness to the event. As Harris tells us that we are just forwarding information and not changing it, it surprises me how different sources forward information but yet change it when they have no right to do so. If the story is being used on a opinionated program then by all means tear and do whatever you want to do to the story, but when it comes down to reporting the news, the facts are all that should be given.