The Cosby Show brought black families into the media world

As we have been discussing in Media and Society, minorities have long been underrepresented in the mainstream media. Scholars have even used the term structuring absence to describe how the lack of images of minorities in the media results in white people being the natural identity category.

One show that really opened the doors to television for African Americans was The Cosby Show. When the show premiered in September of 1984, it gave Americans a new image of a black family.

The parents were successful as a lawyer and a doctor, and the family was thriving. They owned a fashionable home in New York City,one episode even focused around the expensive art that the family had used to decorate.

Accoding to the website for the museum of television, The Cosby Show was designed to address the history of negative portrayals of blacks on televison.

The show topped ratings charts for more than five years. It forced people to face the race issue in America. It made them rezlize that there were African-American families out there just like them.

I don't think that Cosby understood the impact he would have on people when his program first aired. He inspired other minorities to get involved in the media. Today, there are many programs that include minorities.

Even Grey's Anatomy can be used as an example. The Cheif of the entire surgical unit is african-american. So is the chief resident and one of the top surgeons.

It is programs like these that are pushing us towards equality among Americans. I think we are still a ways off, but the Cosby show was the program that made it acceptable to present blacks on television.

Television stations could be good for newspapers

In class we have discussed the drawbacks of media conglomerates, both on a national and on a local scale.

On a national scale, media companies that own several television stations, radio stations, newspapers and other types of media make it difficult for smaller companies to compete.

On a local scale, having a single company own the television station, the radio station and the newspaper limits the amount of information presented to the audience. Instead of sending out three reporters who find three different angles to a story, the company can send one to cover all three genres. This eliminates different viewpoints of the story. It would also be difficult for the audience to determine the accuracy and objectivity of the reporting, because there is nothing to compare it with.

This appears to be a problem that should be avoided. However, a recent op-ed article in the New York Times advised that local television stations could be the savior of regional newspapers.

Newspapers are becoming more of a novelty in America than a staple to daily life. As a result, newspaper subscription numbers are down. People are turning to online resources for news, and advertisers are turning from print media to the internet with their business.

In the article The Daily Show by Kevin J. Martin, Martin states that at least 300 daily papers have stopped publishing over the past 30 years.

He points to televion as a way to save newspapers. Martin argues that companies who own newspapers in the 20 largest cities should be permitted to purchase one tv or radio station within their community.

Martin goes on to argue that not allowing newspapers to own television stations could hurt the quality of news the paper is able to produce. A television station could bring in revenue to help run the newspaper and allow journalists to do more in-depth research, or allow the company to hire more journalists.

This appears to be a catch-22 in media today. It is a logical worry that having a sinle company own a lot of the local media market could result in non-objective reporting or incomplete stories. People could be less informed than if several companies owned different aspects of the media. However, without the revenue and cooperation of the media outlets working together, one company may not have enough resources to produce a quality product.

Working moms a problem for Colbert

In class we discussed how first wave feminism brought women into the work place. Men were off fighting in World War II and women were needed to take their roles in the factories.

Women have been working outside the home ever since. Still, there are people who believe that a mother's sole job should be to care for her children.

Take Steven Colbert for instance. He recently announced that he was running for president in the state of South Carolina. His manifesto, I am America (and So Can You!), outlines much of his campaign platform. In it he discusses his view of working moms. He said on a recent episode of Meet the Press that a woman should spend every second of her time thinking of her children. He said in his book that working outside the home is as bad as bringing coconut arsenic brownies to the school bakesale.

While Colbert's book is probably as serious as his campaign, the fact that he would even think to write such a thing shows that those beliefs do still exist. His book reached number one on last week's New York Times Best Seller List. A facebook group titled 1,000,000 strong for Steven Colbert recently surpassed a 1,400,000 person membership.

I doubt that these people really believe that mothers working outside the home is equivalent to feeding children drug-laced desserts,but Colbert's writing could certainly reinforce the negative image of working moms.

Surely his writing is not to be taken literally. If it is, he has alienated a large part of the voting American public.

Citizen Reporters

I recently watched an interview that Matt Drudge creator of the infamous Drudge Report had with the National Press Club. As we are showing through this class project, blogs are everywhere. There are millions and millions of blogs.

People use blogs to keep in touch with family and friends. Some people use them as journals. Now, it's becoming increasingly popular for people to use their blogs as news sites.

As Matt Drudge showed, regular citizens can become journalists. Drudge was working in the CBS Gift Shop when his father bought him his first computer. He soon discovered how to post information on the information, and as they say, the rest is history.

Now Drudge's sight gets more than six million hits a month. He has scooped the mainstream media on several major stories, such as the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the Microsoft and NBC merger.

Yet, the National Press Club seemed to despise Drudge. They accused him of suspect methods. They said he spread gossip as much as he reported news. He doesn't do in depth research or check his facts.

Drudge, however, says that he's just one of a growing number of citizen reporters.
People who take on the powers that be. They are the watchdogs of the watchdogs. Now that anyone is able to post information on the internet, people don't have to go through mainstream media to get something seen by the world. They can simply upload it to YouTube or MySpace.

It eliminates the need for editors which eliminates the filtering of news. According to Drudge, it enables the public to have access to a more accurate complete view of what's really happening.

Just Another Reason!!

It's one thing to know personally that your U.S. Representative sucks, but it's a whole different level when he portrays his incompetency to the world YET AGAIN.
Just another reason why I'm SO proud to be from the Fifth District.

"Taxation without Representation"

That's what you'll read on a Washington D.C. license plate. The theory has always been 'no taxation without representation' right? That's what led to the Revolutionary war. That's what led to the Declaration of Independence. That's what led to a democracy where "citizens of every state" are represented.

So why did citizens of D.C. change their license plates in 2002 to read "Taxation without representation"? Because, those living in the nations capital are not being represented.

Citizens of the District of Columbia do not actually live in a state. They do have a representative in the House, Eleanor Holmes-Norton. However, Norton is not allowed to vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. For this reason, she is known as a silent representative.

It seems very ironic, that in the nation's capital, the birthplace of democracy, the people are not given a fair say. It goes against the very ideology of democracy that we discussed in Mass Media and Society.

We examined democracy as an dominant ideology in America. People believe in the right to vote and the need to have a say in who runs their government and how that government is run.

Not allowing residents of Washington D.C. to participate actively in the democratic process goes against this dominant ideology.

Now, residents are fighting back. As stated, they changed their license plates in 2002, and added the phrase, "Taxation without Representation."

In September of this year, a bill that would give the District of Columbia one full-voting member in the House of Representatives went before the Senate. The bill was shot down. Opponents said that the bill went agaist Article I of the Constitution, which says that the House of Representatives will be elected by citizens of "several states".

According to an article on About.com , more than 500,000 Americans are residents of the nation's capital. They pay the second highest per capia federal income taxes in the country, yet they have no say in how that money gets spent.

There has been a call to add an Amendment to the Constitution, allowing DC voting rights. Some strides have been made. Citizens of the District of Columbia were finally granted the right to vote in presidential elections in 1961. In 1973, Congress passed the District of Columbia Home Rule Act which allowed citizens to elect their own mayor and city council.

Not allowing citizens of Washington D.C. an active member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate goes against the very foundation of America.

Democracy is one of the strongest ideologies in our nation. There is no reason that those who live in our nation's capital, the heart of our democratic world, should not get to participate in that.

Debate of the Century?

There has been a continuing drop in news readership and viewship over the last decade or so, particularly among young adults.

It seems that everyone in the media and those who study the media are particularly fascinated by the trend. Those who own newspapers and television stations are trying desperately to entice audiences to return to their programming. Those who study the media are analyzing trends and making theories as to why people are no longer paying attention.

One person who hasn't been losing ground in the viewship battle is Jon Stewart. Stewart's television program, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is a hit on Comedy Central. The Daily Show is a parodied news program that gets rave reviews for it's comical twist to real stories.

The polar opposite of the Daily Show, is the godfather of news stations, CNN. Particularly, CNN's political coverage with programs like The Situation Room. The man behind the Situation Room, and all of CNN's political programming is CNN Political Director, Sam Feist.

Now, with the presidential primaries around the corner, candidates are in full campaign mode and have been for months. Feist brags that CNN alone is hosting nine debates for the presidential hopefuls,including one earlier this year on YouTube.

As interesting as presidential debates are, I think a debate between Stewart and Feist would trump all.

In a 2004 C-SPAN interview (video) Stewart berated the media industry, saying that reporters were lazy and organizations were more interested in earning money than serving the public.

Stewart referred to presidential debates, the ones that Feist thinks so highly of, as horseraces. He argued that they are merely political pundits who've fed their words to the candidates, and the public doesn't really get anything out of the scripted banter.

Stewart also said in the same interview that CNN is no longer the tough, go to newstation it once was.

"CNN has the saying, 'CNN, news you can depend on.'" Stewart said. "Well guess what, I've watched CNN and no you can't!"

Feist has taken a few jabs at Stewart and his audience as well. He said that he doesn't understand why people watch the show. He personally does not like it.

In a speech earlier this month Feist said, "I don't know how people can watch that show. It's not real!"

In the end, it all comes down to what each feels they are offering the viewer. Feist believes they are drawing in a younger audience with their Election Express. They are conducting focus groups and doing in-depth research. Although, their idea of in-depth research is debunking the Obama Madrassa story Perhaps if they put as much work into their every day issues, people could be informed again.

Stewart, on the other hand, is reaching viewers. They are drawn to his witty bashing of the candidates and over the top anecdotes. How much they actually learn about current events and the presidential candidates is questionable.

Feist and Stewart should go head to head in the media battle and argue it out about the affective way to reach young viewers and what is wrong with the media today. That would be a debate worth watching.