The O's Have It... AGAIN.

I've commented on this story once before, but since it has come up again in the news I'll do it once again.

By now we know that Oprah is endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Campaign... and starting next week Oprah will follow Obama to four different appearances across three key states.

If you're thinking that this could be trouble for Hillary Clinton with women's votes.. you're probably right. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed the two separated by just a point among women in Iowa.

So with Oprah being voted "The Most Influential Celebrity"and following Obama's campaign trail for awhile... it's going to be interesting to see how many people she's going to influence.

eTHiCs!!

Even after taking a whole semester of Ethical Issues in Mass Communications, ethical dilemmas in journalism are NOT any easier to solve. Journalists are faced with ethical decisions everyday.. and since there’s no set of “rules” people will respond to the dilemmas in very different ways.

Whenever I am faced with an ethical decision in journalism I always turn to the Society of Professional Journalists ‘Code of Ethics.’ Journalists should:

1. Seek Truth and Report It: Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
2. Minimize Harm: Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
3. Act Independently: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.
4. Be Accountable: Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

A journalists duty is to seek truth and provide a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Although no one “hopes” to be faced with an ethical decisions.. it is inevitable.. as long as you (the journalist) stay true to your own morals and use the Potter Box to identify the Facts, Values, Principles, and Loyalties… hopefully you come out with making the right decision.

LINKS

“You Must Be Streaming” tells us that the world of news is constantly changing. As journalists, we know that. We know that web news is different from both newspapers and television news. The article also tells us another obvious thing… “Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t.” Either way, television news does have some competition, because of course people want to pick the news they want to hear about and of course they want it anytime they please.

The blog talking about Ken Speake I found was both quite interesting and truthful. Speaking from experience I agree with what Speake said about not knowing how the story is going to unfold until you actually go over the footage/ visuals. I can also completely agree with how he thinks some broadcasters have an awful tone of voice. They do sometimes sound “inhuman” and their voices sound very forced sometimes. When I watch the news and experience a reporter like I am very tempted to change stations.

I found the article “What Journalism Can’t Do” very interesting. I was unaware that there was an actual study done on the numbers in a tragedy. Although I didn’t know one existed, as a journalist I tend to use the story of one individual person to bring something to my telling of it. I feel that focusing on one individual person and then relating it back to the bigger picture does have a deeper impact. It puts a face to the story and that greatly affects people.

The site about Online Storytelling forms sounds pretty interesting. I’ve never done any sort of online journalism and I think it would be very helpful if we could possibly learn something about it in class. Even the idea of mixing different tools to produce online storytelling is very exciting to me!

Mini-scandal

The Clinton campaign has admitted to planting questions in Iowa. Yeah...so, this happened last week when apparently a college student was approached by a campaign staffer and was asked to ask Senator Clinton a question about global warming during her stop in Iowa.

In a later meeting, Clinton said that she had no idea that the questions were planted.
So either Hillary has no idea about how people are running her campaign or she's lying... either way i don't see what the big deal is. i mean yeah it is kind of sneaky to have questions planted.. but if the questions were of that much important to her campaign, don't you think someone would have asked them anyways?

this is only being called a "mini-scandal" but i feel like there are alot more to come before next november.

chapter 19

Working on newswatch 16 has really helped me with all of the aspects discussed in chapter 19. One of the most difficult things about writing for television i have found is writing the lead. With print, you write the most important facts first, using the inverted pyramid. But with tv news, the audience's attention must be grabbed, so you need to make the lead interesting to grab the viewers attention.

Another thing that i have struggled with while writing for television, is writing for videotape. I'll go out get my story, know what quotes from what people i want to use.. but it takes me quite a while to actually figure out how to put the story together with what voice-overs i am going to use. Writing is probably what takes the longest... but once i have that down, i'm fine :)
i definetly suggest working on writing for videotape in class. i've been working on it for the past semester, and i still have difficulty doing it. i hope that eventually writing for videotape comes so naturally that i will not have to struggle with it anymore.

i can't say much about writing for radio, because i'm not interested in writing for radio... but i can imagine it being very difficult because there is no use of pictures, or no visual cues at all.

Investigative Reporting

This chapter tells me that my computer skills along with the techniques taught in this chapter will help me be well-equipped for reporting in the 21^st century.

This first thing before starting out an investigation is to have some suspicion about something, without some idea of what we are looking for, the investigation might turn out to be nothing.

As with any other reporting, this chapter tells us that the most important element in investigative journalism is the accuracy of your work. There is no good excuse for an error, so it is a good idea to use verification from two independent sources before an allegation could be published.

Something I didn’t know about investigative reporting is the fact that you need to consult with a lawyer before your story is published, and that they are the most important part of an investigative reporter’s career.

The IRE website is a good example of how the internet is the most important new tool of investigative reporting. It allows us to obtain, analyze and present information in ways that would have been impossible a few years ago. But the book tells us that the internet is only a “tool,” and we shouldn’t rely solely upon that to do our investigations.

IRE

This is not the first time I have visited the Investigative Reporters and Editors website. I used it numerous times in my J. Research class and think that it is a great website to utilize while doing investigative reporting. With 23,250 stories to browse from, finding some more information on an investigative piece is very easy.

In the Extra! Extra! Section of IRE, I find it quite interesting that everyday there are atleast 2 investigative storied published everyday. That amazes me that journalists are constantly finding new and interesting stories, and investigating them thoroughly.

One of the investigative stories from the Extra! Extra! section that caught my eye was the story about the gas stations in Florida failing accuracy tests. I never really thought about whether or not I’m getting cheated out of gas when I fill up my tank, and I’m pretty sure that the people in Florida are very glad someone investigated that problem. I know if I found out I was being cheated I would want something to be done about it- and by the publishing of this article, I’m sure something is now being done.

After reading this story, I wonder if accuracy tests like this are being done in our area, to see if we are getting cheated on gas. If not, that is a great story idea!