http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134798248/untangling-low-income-budget-cut-claims
This article discuss budget cuts that will affect low income Americans the most. With our talks of poverty lately this article connects with our talks. The budget cuts discussed would effect many of the programs that help veterans, troubled youth, and disabled elderly. I understand that America is in a recession right now, however cutting spending in areas that citizens depend on is not the way to build the economy. It seems that America has its priorities mixed up, because it wants to stop funding for people that are in need, rather then cut spending in other areas. More things need to be done for the good of the people, not the economy.
March 24, 2011
March 23, 2011
Current hydra of a disaster will almost certainly be more costly than Katrina
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110323/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_economy
It looks like the disaster in Japan is going to be the most monetarily costly disaster in history by passing Hurrican Katrina. This is troubling to hear, especially because we have just been given an insider's look at Katrina.
Trouble the water focused a lot on the idea of the government failing its people. I wonder how we will grade the Japanese government's assistance in the current disaster. How will Japan's (and the world's) response to this disaster compare with the response to Hurricane Katrina?
It looks like the disaster in Japan is going to be the most monetarily costly disaster in history by passing Hurrican Katrina. This is troubling to hear, especially because we have just been given an insider's look at Katrina.
Trouble the water focused a lot on the idea of the government failing its people. I wonder how we will grade the Japanese government's assistance in the current disaster. How will Japan's (and the world's) response to this disaster compare with the response to Hurricane Katrina?
March 16, 2011
Poverty
Poverty
* The poverty rate increased from 11.3% in 2000 to 14.3% in 2009, the highest poverty rate since 1994 and the highest absolute number of poor people on record. The 1.1% increase in the poverty rate between 2008 and 2009 was the second statistically significant increase since 2004. View source table
* Between 2000 and 2009, the proportion of children and adolescents under age 18 living in poverty increased from 16.2% to 20.7%, the highest rate for this age group since 1995.
* Between 2008 and 2009, the poverty rate increased by 1.7% among youth under age 18, from 19.0% to 20.7%.
* Between 2008 and 2009, the poverty rate among families with young children (age 0-5) increased by 2.6%, reaching a high of 23.8%.
* Between 2008 and 2009, the poverty rate increased among all age groups but seniors (those age 65 and older), among all races but Asians, and in all regions but the Northeast. Among Hispanics and blacks, the poverty rate increased by 2.1% and 1.1%, respectively.
* Although the poverty rate in households headed by a single female declined between 1993 and 2007, from 35.6% to 28.3%, it increased to 29.9% between 2007 and 2009.
Data sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009.
U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 2009 Poverty Tables.
Federal Reserve Board, 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances, Expanded Inflation-Adjusted Tables.
Federal Reserve Board, 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances Chartbook.
March 01, 2011
Images of War
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=193&paper=1829
This article is an interesting extension to the conversation at the end of Monday's class. Note that here is no mention of the FCC in this article. So, why are media outlets sanitizing the depiction of war? Some highlights from this long read:
"I don't believe there was in my experience, and in my newsroom, a conscious effort to sanitize the war, to make it look cleaner than obviously war is," says Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Miami Herald. "But early on, I think the pictures that our own photographers were getting or those we were relying on were pictures that probably reflected more the successes the American military was having." Fiedler doesn't remember an instance in which editors decided they couldn't run a photo because of the casualties depicted.
Others think the media were tentative. Early on in the war, says Michel duCille, picture editor at the Washington Post, "I think all the media, including the Washington Post, we went with the wave of trying to tell the story, but we weren't going against the American authorities." (In August, the paper acknowledged in a front-page story that it didn't give enough weight to stories critical of the administration's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.) DuCille says he doesn't think the media were consciously censoring themselves, but there was a reluctance to "come out of the gates criticizing or even seeming to criticize the Americans." He echoes Getler's comments: "Finally when that coffin situation erupted..that really made the bough break, and that I was waiting for."
.....
It's difficult to get a consensus on such subjective issues: What's too graphic? What's too conservative? How much does the public's sensitivity play into editorial decisions? If anything's a given in photojournalism, it's that there are restrictions and limitations--both in what journalists can capture with a camera and what editors will show to the public.
.....
James Hill, a contract photographer for the New York Times, was in Iraq for about the first seven weeks of the war. He was not embedded with a military unit, but he joined U.S. Marines three days into the conflict. "It's hard to say the media is at fault itself," he says of the lack of graphic images. Not military restrictions but simple logistics meant Hill couldn't always photograph what he saw on the road to Baghdad. "You're driving where they're driving," he says. "I was in my own Jeep... But if you're in a convoy, you're not saying, 'Hey, that's a good picture. Let's stop and take it.'"
.....
The unilaterals in Baghdad faced different restrictions. Mostly being led around by Iraqi officials (before the city fell to coalition troops), journalists didn't always know the circumstances behind the carnage they were shown. Colin Crawford, assistant managing editor, photography, at the Los Angeles Times, remembers one photo taken by Carolyn Cole of two dead children in a morgue. It was a "very powerful, moving photo," he says. But Iraqis had taken journalists to the morgue, and the paper didn't know how the children had been killed. Had a journalist been able to confirm that U.S. bombs had killed them, or perhaps if Cole hadn't been led to the scene in a parade of journalists, the Times would have run the photo, Crawford says. But in this case, "we were being used," he says. "We felt manipulated, and we didn't run it."
My favorite excerpt is the last one because it shows how photos can be taken out of context, or misrepresented and used to manipulate public opinion. Even more importantly though, it reminded me that photographs may also accidentally be misleading. For example, a picture of the brutalized corpse of a child may be published causing a serious change in public opinion, when in reality this isolated event may not be an accurate representation of the war.
This article is an interesting extension to the conversation at the end of Monday's class. Note that here is no mention of the FCC in this article. So, why are media outlets sanitizing the depiction of war? Some highlights from this long read:
"I don't believe there was in my experience, and in my newsroom, a conscious effort to sanitize the war, to make it look cleaner than obviously war is," says Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Miami Herald. "But early on, I think the pictures that our own photographers were getting or those we were relying on were pictures that probably reflected more the successes the American military was having." Fiedler doesn't remember an instance in which editors decided they couldn't run a photo because of the casualties depicted.
Others think the media were tentative. Early on in the war, says Michel duCille, picture editor at the Washington Post, "I think all the media, including the Washington Post, we went with the wave of trying to tell the story, but we weren't going against the American authorities." (In August, the paper acknowledged in a front-page story that it didn't give enough weight to stories critical of the administration's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.) DuCille says he doesn't think the media were consciously censoring themselves, but there was a reluctance to "come out of the gates criticizing or even seeming to criticize the Americans." He echoes Getler's comments: "Finally when that coffin situation erupted..that really made the bough break, and that I was waiting for."
.....
It's difficult to get a consensus on such subjective issues: What's too graphic? What's too conservative? How much does the public's sensitivity play into editorial decisions? If anything's a given in photojournalism, it's that there are restrictions and limitations--both in what journalists can capture with a camera and what editors will show to the public.
.....
James Hill, a contract photographer for the New York Times, was in Iraq for about the first seven weeks of the war. He was not embedded with a military unit, but he joined U.S. Marines three days into the conflict. "It's hard to say the media is at fault itself," he says of the lack of graphic images. Not military restrictions but simple logistics meant Hill couldn't always photograph what he saw on the road to Baghdad. "You're driving where they're driving," he says. "I was in my own Jeep... But if you're in a convoy, you're not saying, 'Hey, that's a good picture. Let's stop and take it.'"
.....
The unilaterals in Baghdad faced different restrictions. Mostly being led around by Iraqi officials (before the city fell to coalition troops), journalists didn't always know the circumstances behind the carnage they were shown. Colin Crawford, assistant managing editor, photography, at the Los Angeles Times, remembers one photo taken by Carolyn Cole of two dead children in a morgue. It was a "very powerful, moving photo," he says. But Iraqis had taken journalists to the morgue, and the paper didn't know how the children had been killed. Had a journalist been able to confirm that U.S. bombs had killed them, or perhaps if Cole hadn't been led to the scene in a parade of journalists, the Times would have run the photo, Crawford says. But in this case, "we were being used," he says. "We felt manipulated, and we didn't run it."
My favorite excerpt is the last one because it shows how photos can be taken out of context, or misrepresented and used to manipulate public opinion. Even more importantly though, it reminded me that photographs may also accidentally be misleading. For example, a picture of the brutalized corpse of a child may be published causing a serious change in public opinion, when in reality this isolated event may not be an accurate representation of the war.
Are Computers Getting Smarter, or Are We Just Getting Dumber?
http://stkarnick.com/culture/2011/02/25/are-computers-getting-smarter-or-are-we-just-getting-dumber/
Globalization, which was the topic of last class, has become a big issue in the latest century. With the interdependence humans have on technology it posses questions about artificial intelligence, and if one day humans will be too interdependent on technology rather then social needs. Are we hindering generations with a constant need for access to a virtual world? Will reality and real become one?
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