America Is Not The Greatest Country

Americas greatness is a controversial topic on the worlds standards of living. In the opening scene of the television show “The Newsroom”, Will McAvoy the news anchor, is in an auditorium participating in a panel of politically knowledgeable people. McAvoy who is the protagonist of the show, he avoids answering one of the questions asked by a student “Why is America the greatest country in the world?”. He finally does answer “it is not the greatest country in the world.” By analyzing the video “The Newsroom Opening Scene” the viewer sees how McAvoy appeals to ethos, logos and pathos to express his answer.

Within Joyce Nelson’s essay, “TV News: A Structure of Reassurance”, Nelson criticizes the TV news structure that perpetually disconnects current events from their historical background through comforting anchorpeople partnered with advanced technology to create a TV program that minimizes the important implications of current events. Though lacking the amount of information that a print news publication can maintain, the TV news can convey immediate information through technological advances of modern TV equipment to allow the medium to remain competitive. The façade of in-the-moment international information broadcasted directly to viewers enables anchorpeople to maintain the feeling of immediateness, keeping the viewers believing the program

America is not perfect, but one day it can be. Throughout the history of America there has been many failings and vain attempts to make America a Utopia. An American is supposed to be an idealized version of ourselves, a perfected image, yet that is not true, far from it even. There is still many struggles that we as americans face today, such as poverty and racism. In fact more that 45 million people fall under the poverty line in the 2014 census. There will eventually come a time where these discrepancies are abolished and I look forward to that day, but that day is not in the now. “A third-generation German American is an American. A third-generation Japanese American is a Japanese American.” This is one of the many examples of racism

In the world of Good Night and Good Luck broadcast journalism was in it’s infancy, television had seeped into the homes and lives of the public, and Americans lived in fear of an invasion of the red. This isn’t too different from our world today: instant-access journalism is on the rise, the internet has captured our lives, and Americans live in fear of an invasion of foreigners. George Clooney’s film has a remarkable timelessness to it, which goes far beyond the confines of the screen. Clooney is able to encapsulate the struggles of the past to reflect on our current political crisis. By utilizing Murrow’s famous “Wires and Lights in a Box” speech, Clooney use the real words of his protagonist

In an effort to expose the epistemology of television, which Postman believes has not been effectively addressed, he examines the effects of TV on several important American cultural institutions: news, religion, politics and education.  All four institutions, Postman argues, have realized that they have to go on television in order to be noticed which, in turn, requires them to learn the language of TV if they are to reach the people.  Therefore, they have joined the national conversation not on their own terms, but on TV's terms.  Postman contends that this transformation of our major institutions has trivialized what is most important about them and turned our culture into "one vast arena for show business" (80).  In the case of broadcast news, we see visually stimulating, disconnected stories about murder and mayhem along with a healthy dose of infotainment delivered by friendly and likeable anchors that remind us to "tune in tomorrow".  In the case of politics, we have discourse through distorted paid TV commercials and "debates" in which the appearance of having said something important is

The last and final difficult conversation was a constructive and mind opening experience on the premise of watching and receiving news. During this conversation, my group watched 20 minutes of both MSNBC and Fox News and from there we collectively discussed it. Our first showing was watching Fox News and for me personally it felt like I was watching the tabloids or some might say a reality show. The reasoning behind my viewpoint of it was of them, the newscaster, talking for a like a good 10 minutes about donuts and their relationship between the struggle of the acting directors of Mike Mulvaney and Leandra English of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In addition, the newscasters are still reporting about President Trump’s comment

As a native born American citizen, I am blessed. Blessed with freedom of speech, with freedom of religion, and with the ability to pursue happiness. Because of this American privilege, I am grateful, but I am ignorant. America is a great nation, but because we cannot fully comprehend what it may be like to be born without privilege, we have become selfish. If it is beneficial, America severely chastises and punishes any for the commitment of atrocities against ourselves and others, but when not directly affected, America ignores atrocities committed in other countries, even when committed by us.

In 1968 Ailes participated in helping Nixon get Elected to the presidency. Nixon once said “It’s a shame a man has to use gimmicks like television to get elected.” To which Ailes replied, “Television is not a gimmick and if you think it is, you’ll lose again.” (Dickinson ’11 p. 4) Because of Ailes success with the Nixon campaign, he was hired at Television News Incorporated (TVN). This news station was “designed to inject a far right slant into local news broadcast by providing news clips that stations could use without credit.” (Dickinson ’11 p. 5) The network was biased enough that the news director quit in protest, calling the network a “propaganda machine.” (Dickinson ’11 p.

In the video titled Was America Ever Great? by Charity Croff, Croff goes to look into the past of America and shows that America really never was as great as Donald Trump thinks it was. Unless Trump’s idea of greatness is the genocide of millions of native American’s, the stealing of land from the natives and Mexico, and African Americans being forced against their will to work until they die from horrific working conditions then as Croff says “America was never great”. He also goes to say that it is hypocritical of us to be so against illegal immigrants when the first Europeans landed and colonized America were illegal immigrants themselves. Our entire country was built on immigration by immigrants. Croff explains how the Indian Removal Act

The artifact I chose for this week is a famous speech given the popular HBO TV show the Newsroom. This speech is given by a guy name Will McAvoy. Will McAvoy is doing a Q/A in lecture hall when he gets ask the question “Why is the US greatest country on Earth?” Two other people answer the question with the usual “freedom” talk. His answer starts off similar theirs. However, he starts giving an unusual answer where he claims America is not the greatest country on Earth.

The mass medium I have chosen to critique is a new television show called This Is Us and it airs on the NBC channel. This Is Us is a show about a family with triplets and they show how they handle all the different parts of their lives. This particular mass medium addresses many of the different current issues going on in today’s society including; race, diversity, education, religion, and politics. This Is Us addresses diversity in today’s society and portrays many different types of people within this one television show. To prove that this mass medium portrays diversity I will look into how this show illustrates race, different social stances, and different educational backgrounds both positively and negatively. Also, to better the credibility

This event taught us as media professionals to always listen to the whole story., In the beginning of the segment the broadcast stated that this was a theatre production. Not only did this encouraged active listening, this also encouraged us as media professionals to be more detailed with all the stories that we present to the public. When presenting stories, we want the audience to actually care and maybe not have the exact reaction they did but to have a level of

Over the last few decades, cynicism in America has taken a downward spiral out of control. It is no secret that humans are intrinsically good and strive to be honest and thoughtful to one another, but we still ended up here. According to Tom Basile, we have the influx of media outlets to thank. He states that "American media institutions have been successful at driving and profiting from a dour outlook" as they flood us with the most negative stories they can get their hands on.

The media in today’s society is constantly filtered by bias news reporters that are leaning more towards a conservative point of view or a more liberal point of view. However, despite this circumstance, there is still hope in the media to seek the truth. In order to evaluate the information that is provided by the mainstream media there is a tool that John McManus calls a SMELL test. This simple test helps viewers depict the facts from the fallacies and as well of seeing the producers intentions. Truth in today's media is difficult to identify because news producers are only sharing their political opinions rather than share pure facts. Broadcast networks also fail in providing points of views from both a conservative and a liberal point of

“You think this is more real, truer-to-life than anything around you” (1092). As society relies more and more on what the media must tell them, they keep forgetting what is going on in their lives right in front of them. This happens with even simple television, and it is when, after a while, what one is witnessing becomes more of a reality than actual life occurring. This is easily visible when a woman might protest for more aid for the poor directly from the government, but ignores the poor in her own community. She might be walking down the street for a protest and fail to notice the poor man begging for change on the curb. When the news is bad, it creates panic in society, as if America will ultimately fail, however, when the news is good, people become oblivious to the negative things going on in their own