This week we watched two episodes from “The Newsroom” We watched the pilot. “The Newsroom” is about a news group who endeavors to make a news show that reports the news in a moral and sensible manner. They take genuine, newsworthy occasions from our reality as they’re occurring and report on them as though they were a real news station that pursued normal and good rules, in a gnawing analysis of our famous press and a cunning obscuring of craftsmanship and reality. Will McAvoy, the new anchor is wanting to carry something new to television. His producer, McKenzie MacHale, who was once impractically engaged with the new boss wouldn’t like to have her staff think about it, only a couple of all around associated companions. The present tattle condition saturates into this offering which as it were, doesn’t show anything new, so far as that is concerned. The show begins with Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, responding to questions at a nearby school. Furthermore, in the wake of utilizing a little humor to get passed questions he would not like to reply, he at last snaps when the host requests his supposition if America is the greatest country in the world. Not only does he lash out at a college girl, but he also lashes out on the country that turns his career for the worse. Mr. McAvoy is the head stay at Atlantis Cable News (ACN) and when he comes back to work after his lash out, he realizes the vast majority of his staff is gone from the newsroom. As he examines what occurred with the head administrator of the system Charlie Skinnern, understands that his manager contracted another official maker for the show without allowing Will to meet her. Notably, the new official maker is Mackenzie McHale, who has had a relationship with Will in the past that turned sour. It doesn’t take Will long for him to be totally angry with the entire quandary yet needs to confront realities that she will help spare his show after his outburst.
We then watched “The Blackout, Part 1: Tragedy Porn”. In the Blackout Part 1, Charlie, McAvoy, and MacKenzie have no choice but to cover the Casey Anthony trial despite their protest due to Nancy Grace securing a large bit of their audience. They treat it with little-to-no soul or heart, allowing this to infiltrate the importance of their news broadcasts, while Sloan is adamant that Mac report a major economic story on the potential of a devastating collapse of the currency and a debt ceiling ordeal that would affect not just America but the world at large.
Jeff Daniels is flawless in his role as the worn out thrashed writer that simply doesn’t care the slightest bit about anything any longer, yet utilized as well. What’s more, we can see the sparkle that touches off him to become extraordinary once more.
In class this week we focused primarily on the television show the Newsroom. Although I have never seen the show prior to class, I found it to be very interesting and informative. The show relayed issues with modern day news that isn’t always necessarily seen by the public. A major issue that the show faced was whether it should relay real modern-day issues or if it should just be for pure entertainment. Many people in the show had different opinions on what to broadcast to the public and they would often times clash heads on these issues.
The first episode of the Newsroom that we watched in class was the pilot of the show, called “ We Just Decided To”. Will McAvoy, the main news anchor at Atlantis Cable News is just coming back from vacation, after a very embarrassing public accident. McAvoy is surprised to find out that almost all of the people who work under him are leaving him to go work for a different news anchor. His boss also hired his ex-girlfriend Mackenzie MacHale as his executive producer. This makes McAvoy very upset, but his boss insists that MacHale will be of much help to Will. A major issue that many news channels face is figuring out what issues are worth pursuing. A news alert comes through the station about an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, many of the people working for Will see it as something that is not important and tell him that it won’t get a lot of views. As the team does more research, they come to find out that it is an oil spill that had been yet to be plugged. McAvoy and his team pursue the issue and are the only ones to do a show on the oil spill that night. Other news stations had not yet realized the severity of the issue and it was very beneficial that McAvoy displayed this news. The first episode did a good job at displaying an issue that a news station can often have, which is deciding what news to broadcast and whether it will be beneficial to the public.
While watching another episode of the Newsroom in class, we saw an ongoing issue that newsrooms face. This issue deciding to broadcast what the public wants to hear for entertainment or relaying actual news. McAvoys show took a major hit after not covering the Casey Anthony trial. McAvoys and his team’s philosophy is to cover real news that is actually important to the public. After losing nearly half of their viewers, they decide that it is time to make a change. The team wants to stay on top of other news channels and reports about the Casey Anthony case in hopes to earn back their viewers. This episode showed that sometimes the news isn’t necessarily showing you the most important information, but it is showing you what the public wants to hear about.
This week we focused on the news. You can get the news from many different news stations. Cable news covers many different platforms and sides of important things going on in our nation. You can get your news from MSNBC, NBC, FOX, CNN and many other places. However some of it may not always be the truth and depending on the channel can depict it in a liberal or conservative fashion. But the problem with cable news today, is that many people are concerned with the fact that most of these platforms can show fake news. Some news anchors report news that may not be true. The people then will sometimes believe it because the way it is reported may sound true. Some reporters can be trusted but sometimes others cannot. Being sure that you look up facts on what is being reported can be important because it is not illegal for them to say something that isn’t true. I personally am not someone that watches the news much anymore. I have found the news to be very depressing. Most of the time on the news you see something about a mass shooting or something bad happening around the world. I also do not watch much anymore because it is usually just a debate over politics and people yelling at each other on the screen. Very rarely is there something good that is happening but it seems like even when there is they find a negative light on it. I have the app for the Washington Post and the New York Post on my phones, but the only time I find myself checking it is when I get an alert about something.
This week we also watched two episodes of the Newsroom. I have seen the pilot episode in Social Media and Society before, but the second one was new to me. I still very much enjoyed the pilot episode. The makers of the Newsroom really put so much work into the show to show how reporting of the news takes a lot of work and can at times be very frustrating. The second episode we watched I found very interesting. Will and Mac were faced at the beginning of the episode finding out that their rates had took a major dip the week before. They are then forced to cover the Casey Anthony trial instead of looking at major things like the debt ceiling vote. Will also hires the guy Mac cheated on him with to write a story on the Newsroom 2.0. We even find out about a whistleblower too and a congressmen who had an affair. Everyone is faced with a great amount of stress in this episode and try to handle it as best as they can. With this episode it is obvious that the news can get many stories but has to choose which ones they want to report and can be the best for ratings. They may not always make the best decisions but they have to take into mind what the country wants to see.
This week in class we continued to cover the news and how it can shape our opinions on different topics. One of the largest forms of news available, cable news, can be a very misleading outlet for people who are looking to find news, especially if the person looking of it does not know what they are looking for. Many news channels tend to lean one way or the other when it comes to politics, and if you are unaware of that, you can get very misleading information about any number of topics. This can be from either the pundits and producers only giving the side of the issue that shows their party in the better way, or by the pundits telling lies about someone or something to make their party seem innocent or better than the other.
This idea was shown in and also tried to be refuted in by a team in the show “The Newsroom”, a show about a news team that wants to be more truthful about that news and wants to show more meaningful news to its viewers. The anchor, Will McAvoy, is someone who wants to be able to keep his ratings up, and he gets help doing this from his new executive producer, McKenzie McHale, who wants to show real and important news to those who watches their program. The first episode we saw dealt with the BP oil spill off the coast of Louisiana in 2010, and in the show their program was the first to have any coverage of the accident. Every other news program showed a different story to begin with, while they had a full hour coverage of what was going on. This showed that they were worried about something that was of major importance to almost every person in the country versus something that would only bring in people watching for entertainment, like most news programs seem to do today.
In the second episode we watched of “The Newsroom”, they talked about the controversy that was the Casey Anthony trial. In this episode, McAvoy and McHale had a disagreement over whether or not to cover the trial like the other programs. Their program had lost half their viewers to HLN’s Nancy Grace, who was covering the trial. McKenzie did not believe that it was important enough to show, while McAvoy wanted to do whatever it took to keep his viewers so they could host a debate on their show. This correlates to real life because there are many news stations that show the viewers the entertaining things to keep them around, so that they in turn get more money for their station. What is so good about this episode is the way that McKenzie argues against covering this kind of story when she goes into the staff meeting and starts marking off the topics they were going to cover in a very dramatic fashion. The way it ends is also great as they are planning to prerecord an interview with a woman about Anthony Weiner and what has happened with his Twitter account, and right before the interview that McKenzie does not want to do, the power shuts off. She asks for a sign to not go on with the interview, and after the power shuts off says “I didn’t think you had that comic timing”, which I think is a great line.
Millions of viewers of all ages turn into the news every night. The news is a form of media, and many people have came up with their own acronyms for news. Many people have came to believe that the word ‘news’ is actually an acronym for Notable Events, Weather and Sport; that is because news is supposed to broadcast this important information.
So… what actually makes news news then?
Well ask the six major companies that control a 90% of the media seen by Americans.
The figure below really visually amplifies the amount of control and power these SIX major companies have on the media we view everyday. Media has turned into a business with monopolies have the power to control what we see.
TV shows such as The News Room which aired on HBO (which BTW is owned by one of the major companies!) showed what news should be. Modern news has shifted from informing people to entertaining people. In the show a character, Will, is the news caster of a news show called “News Night,” and his show is trying to fix news. Instead of entertaining watchers and making profit the company aimed to give the viewers facts.
The show talked about how news should state facts and be straight forward. News currently can be very skewed towards different viewpoints depending on which channel a viewer decides to watch. In the show the news team is working on taking a moral-high road on news, which is something you don’t see very often today. News which omits facts or is purely for entertainment purposes can be described as
“FAKE NEWS.”
So what is news? Is it whatever the six major media companies want to show us? Is it entertainment and celebrities? Is it weather? It it what is going on with politics? How about what is going on with the world?
Is the news your watching even news or is it “fake news?”
I guess that depends on where a person gets their news from? CNN, FOX, ET, Twitter, Facebook?
Each of these stations may broadcast a different perspective on a story. Or maybe they will even broadcast different stories. So it is up to viewers’ discretion to decide where they get their news from and what stories are important to them.
There was a time in America where the news people were receiving was reliable and didn’t really have a lot of political bias like the modern day FOX news or MSNBC. There was a time where news Anchors had a lot of power because over many years of working within that industry they had built up trust with the people who watch it. Now people need to be educated on media because there is a heavy bias in certain media outlets. Words are twisted and the same story can be used as positive on one side but on the other negative. It is this reason why I have stopped watching cable news myself because a majority of the news is a lot people yelling at each other over different opinions. I also believe that this divide in news coverage has created a divide within our country. Republicans and democrats fight with each other day in and day out about what’s “right” and watching this from the outside has caused me to not really want to be a part of either side. Not to mention that what the news covers causes people to live in fear of how violent they think our society has become. When in fact our crime rates in America has been the lowest they’ve ever been. The news in the modern day society isn’t here to bring us the truth and they aren’t here exposing companies and letting the people in on important problems that need the nations attention. The news is now out for money and views and that means to broadcast anything that’s going to maximize their views. With our current president in place, Trump has called out the media for being “fake news” and this has caused a lot of news outlets to clean up their act. Why this is so relevant is because the News is supposed to be for the people and not for themselves, on top of that this could cause a lot of general distrust for the news anchors we used to know and trust. A lot of times they have no power over it either because if they want to report on something very relevant that isn’t all that interesting and their views drop a significant amount. Well then it looks like that news anchor is out of a job. Isn’t that something? The people in America need to be more educated on the news and fact check the news because everything people hear today are topics they fight about with friends and family members because they are always reinforced by a news outlet that only lines up with someones views. A great example of news outlets and anchors reporting on what matters and what doesn’t is a show called The News Room. These episodes show people what it’s like to have to deal with reporting on the truth or reporting on a topic that will get you more views. It will also show the consequences of what happens when your views tank and the stress of it all. In my opinion I don’t think everything within America should be treated like a business to fill your pockets with money. There are certain things like the news that should be taken very seriously and shouldn’t be used to manipulate an audience.
The history of filmmakers portrayed to the world, that a director can indeed be an artist. An artist is someone who practices or creates a work of art. In my opinion, certain directors are artists in their own special way. But, not all directors are artists, the auteur theory helps to convey the differences between the two. Auteur theory is the idea that the director of a film is the primary driving force behind the creation of a motion picture. In other words, the director is the author of the movie. The key differences between an ordinary director and one who uses the auteur theory is detecting the significance of the movie. Although the director is a very important role, sometimes other factors become more significant like the stars, studios, and producers. The auteur theory makes the director stand out in the film, and even become the reason why you watch the movie. A quote from the studio binder helps to convey this point when they said “People referred to a ‘Clark Gable movie’ for example, because in the 1930’s stars ruled the day. Auteur theory came in the early 1950’s, and it changed all that. It shifted some power away from actors, producers, and studio moguls while giving more power to specific types of directors. It ultimately led to a kind of director-crisis.” This director crisis directly correlates with a need for a director that has a signature stamp on how he/she creates the motion picture. The director I will be focusing on is none other than the famous John Hughes. John has been credited with the success of many films over his tenure, but the one film I will mainly be focusing on is The Breakfast Club.
John Hughes has been famously credited with the making of at least 41 films including famous titles like: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, each Home Alone, each Beethoven, The Breakfast Club, and multiple more highly anticipated movies. John Hughes was born in Michigan in 1950, and he was described himself as a “quiet kid who loved the Beatles.” “Aged 12, he and his family moved to the Chicago suburb North brook in Illinois. Navigating adolescence on the outskirts of a wealthy neighborhood, Hughes’ experiences at Glenbrook High School would inspire his work as a filmmaker.” (The Beginner’s Guide) After graduating high school in 1968 Hughes attended the University of Arizona, he dropped out of his junior year to pursue a career as a copywriter throughout the 70’s. This process helped kick start his film making career in 1983. John Hughes left an imprint on the directing world and was referred by Roger Elbert as “ the philosopher of adolescence”, Hughes’ work – which included eight directorial efforts and numerous screenplay credits – has influenced numerous directors, including Wes Anderson and Judd Apatow, and he endures as one of the most beloved filmmakers of the 1980’s. In John Hughes’s movies he depicts the teenage experience through his directing methods. His greatest contribution as a filmmaker, not just as a director, was the way that his films went against established stereotypes that were not exploited before. In a way, he revolutionized the movie making business by taking simple ideas and created a greater meaning that was previously overlooked. The theme that he portrays in many of his films is that teenagers go against the portrayed childish treatment, and are actually respected adults. He conveyed that growing up as a teenager is a difficult and complex journey that cannot be defined by a single element. This information proves how John Hughes is a director that uses the auteur theory, and depicts his theme into a multitude of movies.
In the movie The Breakfast Club the audience was easily able to pick up on John Hughes teenage theme. The movie begins with many close up shots of the highschool setting, and then proceeds to introduce the characters as they are being dropped off for detention. They all meet in an awkward environment, that is conveyed through full shot lenses, and are met by their detention advisor. Throughout the movie, time moves in a continuous fashion that leads to the end of the movie in chronological order. The five teenagers are trapped in detention and are all different types of people that include:” a brain, an athlete, a princess, a basket-case, and a criminal.”(The Breakfast Club Movie Review) The main plot is that the only thing they all have in common is that they did something wrong and are paying the price for it. The twist is that they actually begin to grow to like each other. Throughout the movie the performances from the actors are spectacular, which is expected with such an all-star cast of young actors. John Hughes used some of these actors on previous movies like Ringwald and Hall. This helped convey his purpose to keep similar actors he worked with. Through the thick of the plot the characters go through conflict with each other and the detention advisor. In the end they all realize they are one alike and share similar traits.
The “R” rating of this film regards the language used, but in my opinion I think it should have been a PG-13 because this film is certainly appropriate for younger teens. In the end John Hughes created and portrayed spectacular films that follow the trend of teenage adolescence. The best way to wrap this up is a quote I found that says “We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us—in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.” (Don’t You Forget About How Deep)
We discuses and watched a lot of the Newsroom. The mane argument was is news really news. This is very questionable. What is the job of news in modern days. This is somewhat unknown…
News used to be bipartisan and what the people need to know. It was never about getting the highest ratings it was about telling the people what happened in the world and what they really needed to know.
We discussed and watched a lot of the Newsroom. The main argument was is news really news. This is very questionable. What is the job of news in modern days? This is somewhat unknown…
News used to be bipartisan and what the people need to know. It was never about getting the highest ratings it was about telling the people what is happening in the world and what they really needed to know.
The Newsroom when it first came out it was called pie in the sky according to our professor. Nobody could guess how wrong the people saying that was. Critics hated the show however, the people loved it.The show touches on the reality that news has become entertainment. When they stop following what people wanted to see to cover the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico “real news” they lost half of all the people who were loyal to them. The had to then back off of true news overnight in order to get them back in fear of losing their audience, covering a politician nudes.
This maybe a slight exaggeration of what happens in real life, however, it’s not all that far off from the truth really. In cable news today we see how much political stance they have spending probably half of their time covering that instead of what is happening around the world.On was the weather it was so bad it was going to cause blackouts however, people don’t care its boring so in the show they ignore it to get screwed by it later that day.
Our reading talks about the undercover boss how it and other shows clime to be news but its drama. Not relating to news at all however, it seem somewhat similar and can confuse watchers because it is set in a documentary format. If it bleeds it leads. Stepping away from the newsroom. In real life people think the crime rates in the United States are higher than ever. This simply isn’t true. However, people will log in and watch a full broadcast talking about crime and people who are tough on crime. Nobody wants to hear that crime is low, it just doesn’t sell it’s not entertainment. Many news stories have to be entertaining not necessarily informational. Television unlike newspaper is not forced to tell the truth to the viewers they have the power to lie to people and mislead them.
The main focus for this week had to do with the media’s effects on information and more importantly, the news. This was an interesting topic for me this week because this really ties into our generation and how we are connected to the news. We focused this week on watching two episodes of The Newsroom. This show allows us to see the struggles within the newsroom as well as the obstacles a newsroom faces when trying to report on true news as opposed to the news that is out there for pure entertainment.
We began by watching episode one, which was called “We Just Decided To.” The series with star anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) onstage at a university event with a couple of political experts and a moderator. The liberal and conservative pundits are yelling at each other over him as the moderator and students ask questions. When a young, blonde woman steps to the microphone to ask each person why America is the greatest country in the world, the liberal and conservative experts give there responses. The moderator then turns to Will and pushes him for a real answer. When he looks into the audience, he sees a woman that looks very familiar holding a notepad saying “It’s not, but it could be.” Will then goes off on a rant about how America isn’t the greatest country in the world unless you want to look at ways it’s number one like number of incarcerated prisoners or people who believe in angels. He calls conservatives crazy and liberals losers. After the talk is over, everyone thinks Will is crazy and this whole moment soon goes viral. Will tries to cover this up by blaming it on his vertigo medicine instead of the fact that he was finally just speaking his mind.
The Liberal/Conservative Event
Since this fallout, no one wanted to work with Will at the ACN newsroom. Because of this, McKenzie McHale was brought in to help. McKenzie has been producing the news in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq for the last few years. It turns out that Will and McKenzie had a romantic past and he goes ballistic when he hears that she is going to be his EP (executive producer). While is bursting allowed in anger, McKenzie and her senior producer Jim Harper show up at the ACN newsroom. Jim was an associate of McKenzie’s through her previous part of her career.
Will McAvoy
McKenzie McHale
Meanwhile out in the newsroom the first word of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill in the Gulf begins to trickle out. After receiving phone calls from highly placed sources, the newsroom scrambles into gear to get this story on the air. The team ends up broadcasting the story while other newsrooms broadcast other top stories. It turns out that this oil spill story became the most popular story at that time, which proved to be a successful broadcast.
In the second half of the week, we watched another episode called “The Blackout Part I: Tragedy Porn.” Since the first episode, ratings have dropped significantly because ACN was not reporting on the Casey Anthony trial. Many viewers began watching the trial on other news networks. After promoting the story ACN gets its numbers back, with a large share of the new audience being female.
Casey Anthony Trial
After this incident, another news story appears. The new headlines are talking about Anthony Weiner’s “accidental” picture of his groin. In the wake of Weiner accidentally tweeting a groin picture to his 40K followers, ACN feels obliged to give the story a bit of coverage as a ratings boost, and to get a pre-tape interview with Sandy, who will let the world know “what kind of a man Weiner really is.” As the interview is prepped, a 98 degree heatwave hits, which knocks out the entire power of the news room turning it into a blackout.
Personally, I was always on and off with watching the news. It really wasn’t until I got a little older that I got my news through social networking. According to the textbook, “young adults have a reputation for being connected to one another and disconnected from the news, but a survey found that mobile devices and social networking are keeping them more engaged with the broader world than previously thought.” Since I only use Instagram, I get some news from there as well as other news applications. The textbook also says “the survey of Americans ages 18-34 found that two-thirds of respondents said they consume news online regularly, often on a social networking site.” Instagram isn’t just the only place to get online news. There are other news apps available as well as social media apps like Twitter where many people get their news daily.
This week in Mass Media we discussed the news and the impact it has on the world. Cable news is often flawed, inaccurate, and heavily opinionated. For me, if I had to watch the news, I would want the most realistic and straight to the point. All the extra arguing and sugar coating just would not do it for me. In order for us students to understand the news, we watched two episodes of “The Newsroom” in class.
In the first episode we watched titled “We Just Decided To”, a troubled news anchor Will McAvoy who returns after a few year hiatus after truthfully answering a group of students about the current state of America. He comes back to a much different environment and struggles to adapt. His ex girlfriend also had a higher role there which was hard for him to deal with since there was clearly hard feelings left. Will must adapt and work with his new team to cover an Oil Spill off the coast of Louisiana. The episode did a great job portraying how dramatic and chaotic covering a breaking story can be. It also shows how hands on covering a story can be and how many people are needed in order to give a great product.
In the second episode we watch, “The Blackout, Part 1: Tragedy Porn” it shows how choosing not to cover a story because it seems more like entertainment as opposed to news can take a toll. The team chose not to cover the Casey Anthony trial because it was more of a circus act than a legitimate story. They lost half their viewers and it forced their hand to cover the trial in order to regain the followers. Mack was extremely against it, but Will and Skinner thought it was crucial to cover it. I thought this episode was interesting because it showed more of the real side of things which is news channels being worried about views, which has a direct correlation to the content. While covering this story, it knocked off many other stories in order to use an ample amount of time. This shows how news outlets cover the entertaining story, rather than other very important things. The content in which we receive is selfishly used for their own success. It just makes you think, What else have we missed on?
I do not pay much attention to the news. I do know whats going on because it is hard to not know. But I do not know the ins and outs of every story. To be honest, I do not really care. Most of the stories are depressing and just jammed down your throat. When I do seek news, its usually on social media from a legitimate source such as NY Times. I think it is ignorant for people who completely avoid the news, though. I feel as citizens we should know what is going on. There is a very fine line between not wanting to know, and tuning it out.
Mass Media & American Life - Fall 19 