A Big Beautiful Door

There certainly seemed to be a great divide between the political landscape in Washington D.C. and that of Corporate America last night at the Super Bowl. Both major US political parties have spent the last couple of weeks pointing out what divides us, both in this country and around the world. Last night corporate America fought back with a number of commercials.

The first that comes to mind was the Coke commercial that showed people from various cultures singing “America the Beautiful” in a number of languages.

Airbnb is being sued for discriminating against African-Americans and violating the Fair Housing Act. They countered with their “We Accept” ad.

Earlier this year Anheuser Busch started to print “America” on its labels instead of Budweiser. They also included phrases such as "E Pluribus Unum" and "indivisible since 1776." The only problem with that is due to the incompetence of Bud’s management team they sold out to, a Belgium company InBev years ago. Here is their take on immigration.

If that was too subtle for you 84 Lumber of all companies made an advertisement that even in this atmosphere was deemed too controversial by the Fox network. Fox rejected the original cut of the ad that featured a wall that blocked people seeking work in the United States. The 90 second advertisement that did air pointed people to 84 Lumber’s website. Of course the website immediately crashed. I went to YouTube and saw the full version. When I woke up the next morning it had over 2 million views. This ad was not something casually dreamed up by the ad agency of 84. It was a specific decision made by the owner of the company who is a Trump supporter.

In a statement, 84 Lumber’s president and owner, Maggie Hardy Magerko, said: “Even President Trump has said there should be a ‘big beautiful door in the wall so that people can come into this country legally.’ It’s not about the wall. It’s about the door in the wall. If people are willing to work hard and make this country better, that door should be open to them."

You can read more about the controversial ad here.
What was your favorite Super Bowl Ad? Post a link in the comments section below.

Artificial Intelligence Brings Artificial News

What if the trending news story in your social media feeding was all story and not news? Recently Facebook announced that it would trend toward automated algorithms rather than humans to generate its trending news feed. Facebook deleted its entire editorial staff responsible for writing the descriptions for its Trending Topics. What could possibly go wrong?

How about a totally fictitious story about Fox News’ MegynKelly supposed support for Hillary Clinton causing Kelley to be fired. Any reasonable human would have looked at the source of the story, (End the Fed) and realized that the story was not from a real news source.

One of the challenges facing us today is staying informed about the complex world in which we live. Throughout the 20^th century most people relied on the journalists and the established news media to act as gatekeepers to filter the news they consumed. On the one hand people could have a reasonable expectation that what they saw on the network news or read in a mainstream paper was reasonably true. On the other hand minority viewpoints had a tendency to be stifled. Now anything is possible. Personally I do use a news aggregator (Google News), but I find the results less than satisfying. To make up for it I read two daily newspapers and several magazines.

Where do you get your news? Do you curate your own news feed, or rely on machines? Here is a short list of News Aggregators.

Wait a Minute

Can I have a minute of your time? That will cost you close to 10 million dollars. I am not a math major, but at nearly 5 million for thirty seconds of time during Super Bowl 50, that adds up to almost $10,000,000 a minute. What does that mean? It means you and your eyeballs are valuable. Without you watching the Super Bowl the advertisers would not be paying that exorbitant sum for access to your hard earned money. Even if the networks are lying about how much money they get, (why would television lie to you) there is still an enormous amount of time, money and energy involved in getting at your wallet or purse. Let’s say CBS gets as little as 4 million per thirty second advetisment. By my count there were 82 ads in the last Super Bowl. That adds up to almost one quarter of a billion dollars, or enough money to buy 1,217 average houses in Frederick County, Maryland.

With all that money spent did it have any effect? Are you going out to buy that Audi R8 Coupe for $115,000? Me, I’m a sucker for Christopher Walken, and I always wanted a Walken Closet, so I guess it’s the $21,000 Kia Optima for me.

You! – Compared to Everyone Else in the History of Civilization.

The Pew Research Center has published a survey titled “Teens,Social Media & Technology”. In it you will find statistic after statistic describing the technology that the teens of today use to communicate with each other and entertain themselves. The remarkable thing about all of these statistics is that they are describing activities that were impossible for the teens of just a few tears ago to carry out. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. did not exist until after every teenager alive today was born. Even the idea that teens could spend any time online is relatively new. As late as 1997 only 18% of US households reported accessing the internet. Social Media doesn’t really exist until the 21^st century. What does it all mean? What will change? My guess is everything.

Another One Bites the Dust

How important is it to you to believe your newscaster? A half generation ago the most trusted man in the country was Walter Cronkite the nightly broadcast news anchor for CBS. Now news casters have become the laughingstock of the internet.

Brian Williams “misremembering” of events while covering the Iraq War may well cost him his job. And believe me, it is one of the best jobs in American media. There is currently only room for three anchor positions in nightly broadcast news. His position has earned Brian Williams a net worth of $40 million and salary of $13 million per year.

Here may be some of the last words you will hear from the NBC News anchor, “In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions… As managing editor of ‘NBC Nightly News,’ I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days.”

You can read more about Brian Williams’s debacle in the NewYork Times.

By the way, according to a nationwide survey the most trusted person in America is now Tom Hanks.

Sex! Drugs! Social Media!

Sex! Drugs! Social Media!

How are sex, drug addiction and social media alike?

According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the theory is that individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and that doing so engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward. In other words when we post about ourselves our brain releases the same chemical, (Dopamine) that is released as a result of rewarding experiences such as food, sex, and the neutral stimuli that become associated with them.

You can see a short video about how Social Media changes our brains here.

USA! USA! USA! We’re Number 1! Oh, Excuse Me 46

The United States of America values the freedom of the press so much that it made those freedoms part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Not the second or third amendment, but the very first one. How could the United States fall a whopping thirteen places to be number 46 in something they pretty much invented? Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden helped, but there is also the Department of Justice's seizure of Associated Press phone records.

For those of you who need help remembering the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, here is number one –

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

McCarthyism in the News

In a recent class we talked about “McCarthyism” and how it relates to the media in general and to the news cycle specifically. Every year I think of deleting it from my syllabus. Whenever I include a topic in my class I ask myself, “How relevant can this be to students today? Then I will undoubtedly encounter the topic within the next week as I scan the media. McCarthy was no different, as Congress moved to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of congress. Many in the media compared Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) probe of the Internal Revenue Service to the tactics used by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) and his Senate Committee on Government Operations.

For extra credit I watched the movie Chaplin, where one of Hollywood’s greatest creative geniuses is barred from returning to the United States for his perceived political views.