"Dog Bites Man" is News, Why Photography Matters

 Photographer Charles Moore passed away on March 11, 2010. He is noted for his photographic work documenting the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Many readers may not recognize the name of Charles Moore, but his photographs found a nationwide audience in Life Magazine, and are credited in helping hasten the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is hard to imagine now in our multichannel media wonderland what an impact an 11 page photo essay in Life Magazine could have in the United States. With circulation topping 13 million, it is estimated that half the adult population, including the political leaders of the country read Life Magazine. According to noted historian Arthur Schlesinger, “The photographs of Bull Connor's police dogs lunging at the marchers in Birmingham did as much as anything to transform the national mood and make legislation not just necessary, . . . but possible."


Charles Moore was born and raised in the south, and was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. While photographing the Civil Rights Movement, he was both beaten and arrested by supporters of segregation. Moore’s photographic style included the use of wide angle lenses that required him to get closer to the action than many of the other photographers. According to a March 2005 interview in The Montgomery Advertiser, Moore recalled some of the events of the “Bloody Sunday” riots in Birmingham during 1965. After witnessing a policeman club a black woman with a wooden baton Moore recalled “that was a moment that really made me angry that someone would club a woman…made me angry that people could treat other people like that. It was emotional. I thought it was important to photograph those police with dogs attacking people.”

Many of the landmarks of the civil rights movement were covered by Moore while under contract to the Black Star Publishing, Inc. In 1989 Moore received the first Kodak Crystal Eagle Award For Impact In Photojournalism. From the arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama in 1958 and James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi in 1962, to protests in Birmingham, Alabama and marches in Selma his photographic images form a road map of the Civil Rights Movement.

Free Laptop!

Would you trade the privacy of your own home or bedroom for the use of a free laptop? We all know that one of the drawbacks of living in today's technology rich society is our loss of privacy. We knowingly trade a portion of our private life to Google, News Corporation, Microsoft and the like for a brave new world of media rich content. The trade that the Lower Merion School District made with its students had a hidden clause.  The students each received a laptop for home use, a shiny new Mac with a webcam. The problem was that the school district had an undisclosed policy of locating stolen or missing laptops by secretly activating the computer's webcam. If you brought the laptop into your bedroom, bathroom, wherever - sorry! School officials admit that the paperwork parents and students signed did not disclose this bonus feature included in every laptop they gave to students. The school district also claims that they never "spied" on students. They go on to state that they activated the cameras 42 times in the past 14 months in order to recover 28 missing laptops. "Activated" a camera in a teen's home somehow differs from spying. It turns out that this became news when the school officials called in a student and confronted the student with pictures of him in his bedroom allegedly doing drugs. He claims they were his favorite candy "Mike and Ikes". There is some very good balanced coverage of this case form the tech site arstechnia. You can also see how mainstream media covers the topic.

Gatekeeping in action

The secret profiles commissioned by the Pentagon to rate the work of journalists reporting from Afghanistan were used by military officials to deny disfavored reporters access to American fighting units or otherwise influence their coverage as recently as 2008, an Army official acknowledged Friday... From the Stars and Stripes 8/29/09.

In studying the media you often hear the word Gatekeeper. Imagine all the news items of the day as flock of sheep in a holding pen. The shepherd is the editor, publisher, cameraperson, reporter etc. that decides which sheep make it through the gate to get fleeced/published.  Not satisfied with that simple arrangement the United States Army decided to hire a Public Relations firm to be Gatekeepers to the Gatekeepers. According to Maj. Patrick Seiber, spokesman for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, "We’re not trying to control what they report, but we are trying to put our best foot forward.” In other words "we are trying to control what they report." Unfortunately the Pentagon forgot to control the reporters for The Stars and Stripes. As stated on their web site "Stars and Stripes is a Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community....Editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command. " For their reporting on this subject  Charlie Reed, Kevin Baron and Leo Shane III won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting. If you are interested in excellence in journalism and current affairs go to the List of all the Polk Awards for 2009.

In the Heat of the Marketplace, Media Conglomerates

With the economy swirling away down the toilet, Iran enriching uranium to 20% and the nation surrounded by terrorists, perhaps news of yet another media merger does not do enough to pin the fear meter to make it to the top of the news cycle. One of my favorite media critics thinks differently though. Lisa de Moraes, who writes ”The TV Column” for the Washington Post, took on the exciting job of covering a Senate subcommittee hearing on the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC. Yes that is correct; the cable delivery system wants to be your primary content provider. What could go wrong? You can learn more on Ms. Moraes' take on the proposed merger.

My favorite part is when Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says with a straight face, “Our success will stimulate our competitors to be more innovative, too. So this joint venture should be good for consumers, innovation and competition”. Translated from CEO to English that reads - “by buying out our competitors we hope to make even more money, forcing the other media moguls to do the same and leaving the consumer with even fewer choices.”


Wasn't this all settled by the Paramount decision of 1948, when the United States Supreme Court declared it illegal for movie studios to own the theaters in which the movies that they produced were shown?

Blogging in Class

Today I added 25 blogs to the blogosphere, though I did have help from 25 students in my Intro to Electronic Media class. I went into class not knowing what to expect. Yes I did the usual walk through of how to create a blog on blogger.com or wordpress.com, but I did not really know what I would get. Every student emailed me a link to their blog after they created it in class. There was almost no time to review the blogs in class, so I went home and opened up my email account. Suffice it to say I was absolutely amazed. I now know more about my students after one week, than I usually know about them after a semester.

I had spent the morning surfing the web about educational theory, implementation of web 2.0 technologies and the inability of educational bureaucracies to adapt in a meaningful way to the 21^st century. I don’t want to say “who cares?”, because I care. But to all the educators out there wondering “Can I implement Web 2.0 into my classroom in a meaningful way?” the answer is a resounding - Yes! When can I do it? Now!

A special note to my students – You are astounding. If you don’t believe me just check out each other’s blogs at the link to our class wiki that I will post in class.

In the meantime here is a link to a video by created by Professor Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University. According to Professor Wesch, "this short video summarizes some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime." Think about how some of the descriptions and statistics might fit you, or someone you know.

Who Owns our Media? Why Should You Care?

On January 29th, 2010 ABC World News chose Steve Jobs as its "Person of the Week" presumably for the introduction of the iPad. What's wrong with this picture you might ask? Here is a short answer to that complex question. ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company. The largest shareholder of the Walt Disney Company is (wait for it) Steve Jobs, this week's "Person of the Week". Talk about brown nosing your boss. Couldn't you just buy the donuts at the next staff meeting? Don't get me wrong, Steve Jobs is amazing with couple of career's worth of highlights. The question is not "Is Steve Jobs' Life amazing?" Instead the question I would like to ask is - "Does Disney's ownership of ABC News affect the content of ABC News?" I have my answer, what's yours?
Here is the ABC "Person of the Week" story on Steve Jobs -
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/abcs-world-news-diane-sawyer-person-week-steve/story?id=9699563

By way of contrast, here is the NBC Nightly News story run the same days as the Jobs story. NBC calls their segment "Making a Difference." NBC chose not to profile their largest shareholder, but instead did a profile on an ER nurse helping the relief effort in Haiti. Her name is
Gabby McAdoo.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tom Shales on the Muck and Mire at NBC

When I was a young lad growing up watching the world in black and white on the RCA console TV, there aired a poor man's version of Abbott and Costello. The show was called "Mack and Myer for Hire". Now as the NBC television Network settles into the "Muck and Mire" of its own design, NBC threatens to become a poor man's version of a television network.

Read what my favorite television critic, (Tom Shales) has to say about NBC by clicking on his name at the top of the post.

Welcome to the classroom blog of Introduction To Electronic Media - CMM101-2. This blog will serve as a meeting place and will allow students to communicate with the instructor and each other outside the boundaries of the classroom. For this semester (2010) it will not replace our Blackboard site. To successfully pass the class you must still log onto Blackboard.

What this blog will do is allow us to share information. We can share our likes and dislikes about what is happening in the media today. We will be able to share our favorite websites, links, gadgets and all the other items that make navigating the media world in the 21st century such a challenge and so much fun.