CWA Miss Information Panel

This morning, I attended the Miss Representation panel discussion as part of CU’s Conference on World Affairs. I picked this one because it was the most convenient for me both schedule wise and class wise as I could use it to fulfill this newest blog assignment for this class as well as scoring some extra credit points for a completely different class. Plus, as a media studies major the subject matter seemed really relevant and engaging to me personally so I knew writing about it would be an easy assignment. On the surface it doesn’t appear to have a whole lot in common with the documentary of the same name (which I have now seen at least twice and has evidently become a mandatory outside of class screening staple of any course with the word “gender” or “culture” in the title) but it did breach most of the same subject matter as the main thesis of discussion was based around the film’s central premise of how poorly women are currently represented in a patriarchal media.

The first speaker was Playboy Enterprises CEO, Scott Flanders. What he wanted us to take away was how women are their own “biggest critics” elaborating with “men don’t take as many shots at each other…they’re too busy watching ESPN.” Personally, this is a statement I tend to observe a kernel of truth in and it was nice to see another man with the guts to say this without immediate fear of being labeled as a sexist pig. Sure, you might say that’s a somewhat ridiculous fear in what is supposed to be a university sponsored event meant to promote open and respectful discourse but I actually tend to envision a media double standard where a woman can say this and nobody bats an eye but a man could catch a ton of heat for saying this exact same thing. I don’t know what this says about me and frankly I’m not sure I even want to know.

The next speaker was Willow Wilson, a female author of Middle Eastern descent. Wilson talked about how being a mother has kept her from some of the trappings that surround the business of being an author such as fellowships, grants and meetings with publishers. She also mentioned how she has been writing for both Marvel and DC comics and talked about ways female superheroes are negatively represented. For example, their origin stories tend to involve things like rape, abuse and abandonment; they are drawn to ridiculous proportions and are often shown in outfits horribly suited for crime fighting. These things…well, hopefully only the last two…tend to appeal more to men and she said how they are trying to move away from these things to broaden comics appeal more to women. She concluded her prepare remarks by pointing out how men in all cultures tend to feel so poor, underemployed and underrepresented that they lash out at women. Examples of this she included were the reign of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and the GOP “legitimate rape” controversy of last year’s election campaign.

Judith Registre, an expert on global development who introduced herself as a “philosopher by trade”, was up next and she bought up points of discussion that I felt made tied her with Wilson as the most relevant and engaged speaker on the panel. She elaborated on Scott Flanders’ claim that women are their own harshest critics by pointing out how both men and women are victims of their own culture anywhere you go and raised the question of how we can all liberate ourselves. One answer she gave was in our appearances. We should just start dressing more for ourselves and not let others influence our appearance or shame us into changing it.

Finally, Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation research fellow Alicia Robb spoke. She didn’t speak for as long as the others and mainly stuck to talking points such as women earning less than men and being more judged on their appearances and attractiveness. Frankly, these were really just age old issues and it wasn’t the most dynamic or creative way to transition to the Q&A portion. This panel could’ve benefitted from switching around the order of the speakers, if you ask me.

Speaking of segues and Q&As, myself and another male audience member asked some interesting questions. The guy that went before me posed a hypothetical about what might happen if women everywhere just staged a protest and quit working for a whole day. This seemed to stump the panel. Then, I asked a question aimed specifically at Willow Wilson, who I would definitely pick as my personal favorite speaker on the panel if I had to choose. First I asked if the advent of digital media in the age of print being on its deathbed helped alleviate some of the problems she faces trying to write and raise kids (as per her first talking point) and she said it was quite a boon to her line of work citing one instance where she was Skyping with a publisher and was easily able to tilt the screen upwards so he wouldn’t see her nursing her baby. Secondly, I asked how she got into the comic book industry and she said breaking into newspaper writing and foreign press was somehow much easier as it’s less of a “handshake business” than comics where you have to know everybody. That remark somehow made me feel like I definitely found the right career path for me on journey to and through CU. Anyway, this CWA panel was quite the frank and lively discussion which I quite enjoyed.

ANOTHER New Blog?!?

Here is a link to a brand new blog that I am a coauthor of with classmate Taylor Reed. This is for my big semester project in my this class. Dr. Stevens wanted us to create whole new blogs just for this big project rather than post them on our existing ones.This makes five blogs that I now am expected to maintain. You can most likely expect another entire website form me that's devoted to this project. I didn't get to choose the topic, but it sounds like it will be interesting to research so I'm not complaining. So long!

Website Changes

I will be making some changes to my website for this class as per Professor Stevens' assignment. You can expect them by Thursday. That is all.

My New Website!

The "in class exercises" Professor Stevens had us doing were basically him showing us how to write HTML code so we could create our own website for his class. Even though this assignment isn't due for another week, I've already finished mine. Also, I found my old blog that I had to do for an assignment in my Contemporary Mass Media class two years ago. I may start updating this again, but I am definitely adding a link to this on the site!

In Class Blog Exercises

My professor has informed me via email that the in class "blogging a story" exercises we are to do next week will indeed be published here so you can expect to see those bright and early this coming Tuesday and Thursday (1/29, 1/31) as well as the following Tuesday (2/4). That is all.

Looking Into Ethics: Trends in Reporting

When I was browsing for news items to base this blog post on, I came across these two short blurbs from the 9News website. This first one concerns a body that was found in here in Boulder county and this second one concerns two children finding a frozen body in Loveland.

Seeing these, I immediately flashed back to our class discussion of the tragic Texas A&M Bonfire collapse of 1999 which Professor Stevens had incorporated into his lecture. He prompted the class for a specific ethical principle of journalism (to which only one other student responded) that a journalist should never identify the deceased until their family has been notified by either the police or the local hospital.

This had me comparing my two news items to the Texas A&M story. My two stories didn't mention any names and yet the Texas A&M story took a different approach. The LA Times piece from the day(s) of the incident only reported "at least 28" were injured without naming names in that regard. However, this article on the tenth anniversary of the tragedy does mention specifically that the accident took twelve lives including that of then Texas A&M student Michael Ebanks.

Now, obviously a decade is more than enough time to identify victims of any fatal accident and subsequently notify their families.I'm sure the media had reports containing the names of the victims in the days and weeks after in careful tribute as they were identified. They took very a very ethically sound to reporting on that tragedy.

However, the two 9News items are examples of what I find to be more questionable ethics in reporting. They are not even reporting death, they are reporting found bodies. It is good that they aren't giving out names or conditions at this stage, but isn't it a little bit premature to report to an actual news station that a body has been found missing if it can't be confirmed that the person is dead? At this stage, it would be better served in the local police blotter than being reported by a TV news affiliate.

These two stories from 9News violate one of the "minimizing harm" guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics. They aren't showing enough passion towards those whose news coverage they may affect. Now, it is reasonable that the families of missing or presumed dead persons may be monitoring the news for such a report of an occurrence like this, but this early in the case it's too premature for such a story to reach an outlet as big as 9News. Before even reporting it to the newspaper, the families should've had a chance to be called in to identify the body. Other than that, the reporters seemed to do all they could to minimize such harm and adhered to the rest of those guidelines that applied to them. The second article mentioned children finding a frozen body and I felt like it was handled sensitively enough.

It appears that journalistic ethics may be in decline when it comes to covering death. They could use some close reexamining before they slide too far.

Upcoming Posts

I will post a new entry in this blog on Thursday in response to a class assignment. So far, all I can say is that it will be about ethics and I've found a workable news article that I can base it on. If I have time, I will get started on it tonight. Otherwise, I will be writing most of Wednesday. The professor has said he expects us to do about six of these blog assignments over the course of the class and he's not sure when the rest of them are going to be yet. Next week, we are supposedly doing in class exercises on "blogging a story", so some of those might end up here. I will have to ask the professor just to be sure. Anyway, I will give any other readers of this blog a heads up in the future when you can expect another new substantial assignment post from me. Really, I just like to post them to get some good use out of the Blogger Android app I downloaded on my phone. Who knows? I don't expect to be doing all my assignments from my phone, but it might come in handy someday! See you in a couple of days!