After careful searching through piles of supposed “independent news sources” through Google, I finally chose Democracy Now! as my independent news source. I thoroughly searched the website, and could find to evidence linking to the 5 major corporate conglomerates which is very rare for media outlets nowadays and truly marks a source as independent. I even found this news source listed or directly linked to on several other websites giving suggested independent news media sources. Through searching this website, I could definitely see the differences between a mainstream source and an independent source. The Democracy Now! website is full of stories that may be little known to the mainstream media, yet are just as important as the bigger stories. Another important fact making this source unique is that is uses a variety of media to get the stories out: podcasts, videos, radio broadcasts, television broadcasts as well as its own website. This variety of different media makes it easily accessible and can appeal to a variety of people depending on their preferred media.
MARSHALL'S PLAN
For the reading this week, it is difficult for me to reflect and give a clear cut opinion of how I feel about the topic being presented. Though I agree with certain points, I strongly disagree with quite a few at the same time. The one aspect of this passage that stands out the most to me and I feel is one of the strangest opinions I have ever heard about the media is the idea that the media is bringing back the close-knit, nuclear family. In my opinion, this is one of the most far-fetched, mind-boggling statements I've read in a very long time. In fact, I feel that it is widely believed that the media is doing quite the opposite. Family dinner conversations have now been replaced with new episodes of television shows, talking has been replaced with texting, and video games now dominate what was once a friendly, healthy game of backyard baseball. Yet later on in the passage the author goes on to say that the media is also helping us get more in touch with our emotions, but then turns around and says this may be detrimental because if we are all seeing specific emotions portrayed in a certain light, then all of our emotions will begin to be identical. I can see the point in this statement, yet I don't understand why he would accentuate this as a positive point. If all of our emotions are expressed the same way, then I don't see how this could be positive at all. Overall, I found this passage very contradictory, as well as very outdated, and disagreed with the majority of the points being made.
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