Politics and Journalism

Like Missy's blog mentioned last week, quite a few newspapers are endorsing presidential candidates. It's been happening for years (maybe decades I dont know, I haven't been around very long) and it is somewhat controversial. U of I Journalism students are told throughout the four years we study here that we should always take a non-biased stance on the hard news issue we are reporting. So it is weird to me that we allow these things to happen.

I looked up some more information on it and found this article by American Journalism Review. The article researched whether or not newspaper endorsements impact public opinion. Their findings, for the most part, discovered that endorsements usually had no impact on voters. So why do newspaper do it? Here are some reasons:

Editorial writers explain endorsements with words like "conversation," "values" and "credible."

• Doak: "The primary purpose of editorials is to stimulate discussion in the community [and it's]..a vehicle through which the newspaper expresses its values."

• Collins: "The point of doing an endorsement of a president, or even a senator, is to continue that conversation... When you weigh in, what you're really doing is juicing up the conversation, and that's critical before an election."

• Lynell Burkett, editorial page editor at the San Antonio Express-News and president of the 600-member National Conference of Editorial Writers: "We're here to present a credible opinion and to stir conversation and debate."

• Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post, adds one more: The newspaper as citizen.

* I can't figure how to get out of the quote thing so the rest of my blog is going to be indented*

So it seems that most editors claim that their newspaper endorse canidates so that they could stir up coversation and debate. Do you think they do that? Or do they just make newspapers seem biased?

Also, it causes people to start thinking that they will give skew their stories so that their canidate looks good. We already see that with Fox News and MSNBC. I can honestly say I won't watch Fox News because I think its so biased against my candidate and my brother feels the same about MSNBC. The same could happen for newspapers.

I really think that endorsements are an idea that newspapers need keep away from. What do you think?

Are newspaper headlines and stories too negative?

SIGNS THAT YOU'VE BLOGGED TOO MUCH: A movie quote gives you a good idea for your next blog.

So "The Ring" was on TV Friday night while my roomates and I were getting ready to go out. We got sucked in pretty quickly and ended up watching the whole thing. The last thing on my mind was Journalism or our blog assingment, but a quote from the creepy killer ring girl's father quickly brought it to mind.

When Naomi Watt's character (who is a journalist) brought up the suicide of his wife and his crazy daughter, the father says

"What is it with reporters? You take one person's tragedy and force the world
to experience it... spread it like sickness."

That quote not only had me running to get some pen and paper to write it down, but it reminded me of the countless stories and polls we've seen in our classes about readers beleiving we are too biased or too negative, ect.

I decided to look at the headlines for The News Gazette, The New York Tiimes and U.S.A. Today on this past Friday. Here's some of the headlines on the front page of each:

USA TODAY: "Bailout pushes mortgage rates up", "Sports also paying a price amid the struggling economy", and "Police agencies fear more crime caused by financial meltdown".

NEW YORK TIMES: "Oil price drops, aiding economy and consumers", "In a downturn, college straings family budgets", "Rivals' visions differ on unleasing innovation" and "Courts compound pain of China's tainted milk".

NEWS GAZETTE (from 16th): "Appeals court: Closed session was OK", "Economy takes turn back toward basement", "time to get personal" (about debate) and "recession now coudl evoke that of late '70s".

*** Now this might be a little unfair since we are in a huge economic crisis right now so it is going to reported on quite a bit but the number of negative headlines compared to positive headlines in each newspaper is quite drastic and common no matter what is happening in our economy at the moment. By just looking at the front page of each newspaper in the morning, one could only conclude that our lives suck. As a side note, have you noticed that local papers usually have more "happy" headlines than national papers? I wonder why?

Negative stories sell. People want to hear about the murder in Florida or the kipnapping in Chicago. In the movie, the people wanted to know about the wife's suicide and their creepy daughter. But it is our job as reporters and editors to decide what IS news and what is just sensationalism. Those two lines get crossed more in news than they should, and by looking at the polls from readers: people notice.

So before this becomes a essay instead of a blog, I'll just leave you with a couple of questions. Do you think we should edit for how much negativity we are putting in a paper? Is good news hardly ever news? Why do we seem to focus on the negative?

Numbers in Dog Bite Statistics

**My Pit Bull (Floyd) and me! According to some statistics, I shouldn't let his mouth near my face because at any moment he might bite my face off.

After our discussion about college rape/sexual assault statistics in the media on Wednesday, I started to think about the most annoying statistics to me personally: dog bite statistics.

In Journalism 415, my beat was animals. I specifically focused on one of the most popular dog breeds in the country (and Champaign County): pit bulls. We all hear the horrible stories of pit bulls attacking and killing people. So when looking to see if this was just another sensationalized media circus story or a true fact, I looked up bite statistics. And they were exactly like rape statistics: different according to what Web site you found.

This Web site: http://www.pbrc.net/misc/PBRC_stats.pdf, says that there are no documented fatal attacks from 1965-2002 from American Pit Bull terriers.

This Web site: http://www.dogbitelaw.com/PAGES/statistics.html, says that pit bulls, Rottwielers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks included in studies. But also warns:

If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed--and that has now created off-the-chart actuarial risk, for which the dogs as well as their victims are paying the price.

This Web site: http://www.dogexpert.com/Dog%20Bite%20Statistics/DogBiteStatistics.html, says that Rotts and pit bulls were involved in 50% of reported dog bite statistics.

There are more and more Web sites as you look further. Some say Pits are homicidal dogs that are involved in 75% of all attacks and should never be pets and there are some that say that, on average, dogs like Golden Retrievers and Labradors have higher bite rates than Pits. The statistics are just so mixed that I don't think it is responsible for any journalist to use any of the statistics listed online.

A reporter needs to look at what sites are down-playing Pit bites (Pit bull or animal activist sites usually) and which one's are up-playing it (usually legislators or town council people who don't know much about dogs). They also need to remember the type of people who are raising Pit Bulls, that Pit Bulls are the second most popular dog breed in America and therefore there are more Pits in the U.S. so there will obviously be more dog bites by them and remember that Pits are the most common wrongly identified breed.

They must also remember that many have dog fighting genes from earlier generations (so could be more likely to attack) and are more powerful than most breeds so when they attack, the injuries will be worse than a Chihuahua attack (which makes them more dangerous).

As a person who volunteers at a humane society, I have come across A LOT of Pit Bulls. I was scared because of their reputation in the media, but once I met them, I found out their reputation (at least in Lake County and Champaign County) couldn't be further from the truth. Most I have met are fantastic with people and great with other dogs. It really is how you raise them in my opinion.

I remember talking to a Chicago police man and him telling me that his station will get calls from reporters when a dog attack is called in and the reporters will be very interested until they find out that the dog bite wasn't caused by a Pit Bull, then most go "Oh, nevermind". Don't be one of those reporters.

Pit bulls may be the most dangerous dog in America. But, before you go claiming it, remember to think about each of the contributing factors and how inconsistent the statistics for and against the breed are.

Ethics: Photo Response

After looking at all the photos in Journalism lecture, I came to the conclusion I would not run any of them. Well, not without the person's permission.

If the little boy's family is okay with me posting that moment b/w their dog and their son than I would post it. Same goes if the woman in the Mardi Gras picture if she gave me her permission. But those are the only two pictures I would run with permission.

The other four are disturbing. Three of them are of dead people (well 1 is a dying man) and that is something that may not sit well with readers. Little children look at newspapers whether searching through them for the comics or using them to play with their Silly Putty (you know you all did it!). Dead bodies and suicide are something they should not see nor something anyone NEEDS to see. I would be sooo angry if that was my family crying over my brother's dead body. That is not something I would want to relive when looking at the paper and I do not think it adds anything to the story except sensationalism. The man with his jaw through the gate is just disturbing and might affect people with weak stomachs.

It really dosen't matter to me if the events are local or national. To publish the pictures of dead bodies is selfish and in my opinion, just a way to sell more newspapers. It is also EXTREMELY unethical unless given permission. Yes, even for the suicidal man at the press conference. He was obviously okay with his suicide being public, but he was sick. Can you imagine being the wife or the mother of that man and seeing a picture of your son with a bullet going through his brain on the front page of a newspaper? That's not something anyone should have to experience.

As for the question of where and how to play the photo have any bearing on my decision, I would say only for the Mardi Gras picture. I would want to run that photo (if given the woman's permission) to show the effects of events like these and how dangerous they are. As a young woman that goes to parities occasionally, when I saw that photo, I was horrified. It was definitely the photo I struggled with the most. It could really strike home in a good way to young woman about taking precautions when going to big drinking events (and in my own anger-driven emotion, it would nice to have those men's mother's, employers, girlfriends ect. open the newspaper and see catching the men red-handed because they deserve it). But only in that pretense and WITH the woman's permission. If I was her, I would never want these photo's to run in a newspaper. But if she was okay with it, than so be it.