Ideal "Take Charge" Assignment

1. Without objective basis, I believe the “Take Charge” assignment sounds ominously difficult and laborious. However, research is crucial to my major—and most majors—so I believe it will be helpful to introduce me to research on the college level. I also do not like the group aspect of the project because I like to work independently to insure quality and completeness of works. Again, this project will be helpful because most major also require correspondence with peers.

2. Ideally, the “Take Charge” assignment would rely heavily on media scenarios in history. Most attempts to look at present media issues lack objectivity and sufficient resources. To illustrate, one could look at the media surrounding the September 11th travesty. After September 11th, no one had an objective view of the event. Americans have just recently started to think objectively about the attacks. Also, historic media issues would offer many more objective resources than present issues. Given the vast plethora of historical issues, one could research something specific, such as Marie Antoinette’s degradation by the French media prior to the French Revolution. Or, one could research something broad, such as the “Red Scare” media bias in the United States. Many historic issues have been filtered by time towards an objective description. Pure commentary on current issues is exceedingly difficult because the objective view has not yet been filtered out from the subjective ideal. I believe it would helpful if we were to look at certain historic media issues and derive our own opinion from the sea of existing commentary.

"Which Media Do You Trust?"

1. I did not like that the article heavily relied on a list of statistics because the study size was only ten thousand people out of the many millions who are exposed to the media. I don’t believe statistics are a good source of evidence because the majority of people, including myself, knows very little about the nuances of statistics. I agree that the people have rightly lost trust in the media. The article reflected my own distaste with current journalism. The article was difficult to read because the font was too small and the statistics would have been better suited in a chart.

2. “Which Media Do You Trust?” argues that our peers are our best source of information and that the media is no longer trusted. The writer supplements the latter part of the argument using statistics. However, the premier focus of Glaser’s article is edified primarily by opinion. The evidence that people do not trust certain media outlets is entirely convincing because the percentages mentioned are unacceptably high. The evidence that blogs are a more trustworthy media outlet lacks sufficient substance. Glaser’s argument seems to be derived from abstract democratic ideals. I could counter the statistics on the basis that the study size was too small for such a topic. While Glaser does acknowledge that certain blogs are not trustworthy, I could easily argue that a computer and a blogger account do not qualify anyone to be a journalist. I could also argue against the “feel good” message that many democratic forces will work together towards an ultimate truth using contradictory historical accounts. I could say that Glaser is using a bifurcated argument by saying that media must be either trustworthy or untrustworthy and only one or the other is acceptable. Altogether, Glaser’s argument lacks sufficient edifying evidence to thoroughly convince someone to turn to blogs as a source of media.