Politics

After our class discussion on Tuesday, I found it to be a good eye opener as to how people are impacted by others behavior.  I thought it was good for us to watch since so many people in our country have no idea as to what has been going on with poverty, unemployment, and other issues that have been in the news. Personally, I do not know much about politics but I feel like neither did a lot of the protesters we saw in the videos.  It seemed as if they were just following the actions by others.  After watching the videos, it just seemed like people were angry about how their own lives had turned out, and wanted to blame someone else.   I agree with Lippmann’s idea that there are experts out there who make decisions for our country as a living but on the other hand I also believe Dewey’s idea that people should be educated and not leave it up to a small percentage to make the decisions for the country. I think everyone, including myself, should be a little more educated in politics so then maybe these two arguments could somehow find a common ground.

Lippman vs. Dewey

Although Walter Lippman and John Dewey have contrasting views regarding the general public's ability to understand and dissect news, they both agree manipulation is present. Lippman argues for the elites, stating that they are helpful in the dissection of ideas, because they are knowledgeable and trained. Furthermore, the public is susceptible to manipulation. In other words, the elites know what they are talking about and the public does not know as much as they think they know. Dewey, however, believes individuals can understand these complex ideas without the help of the elites. 

The Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements suggest that the public has an understanding of what is happening politically and economically in our society. Lippman argues that we the public are not educated and trained to make decisions and know what to do. He would argue these movements are pointless and have no adequate structure, a.k.a. it is a group of people who have no idea what they are talking about. He would argue that the decisions about the government and economy should be left to the elites, who are trained to make these decisions. However, Dewey would disagree and support the public protests. The public has access to information and facts, allowing them to make formulated opinions about what they deem should happen or change in our economy. 

After watching two news segments on each movement, it was obvious that the protesters were not providing specific ideas or changes that should be implemented to better the economy. Rather they were addressing there is a problem and there needs to be a solution to this problem. They are aware that it is up to the elites to implement these changes. So rather than implying there are "wiser" and "trained" to make these changes, they are just addressing the fact that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Although access to information is available to the public, most people fail to research and obtain all the facts. We watch the news stations and listen to the radio stations that support our beliefs. Or we view several news and radio stations, take in all the information, however differently presented, and attempt to formulate our own ideas. It is difficult to know what the truth is. If the truth was presented, without any bias, the public would be able to have a better understanding of what is going on. We do not need to be thoroughly trained. We just need the facts. It is up to our representatives to implement changes. However, protests are an effective way to promote change. These protests are a response from the public. In order for these protests to be effective, they need to have a strong backbone. In other words, they need to be led by people who are informed. If we are accurately informed, we will have the ability to understand and process what is provided to us without the help or manipulation of the elites.

politics

I've never really been interested in the topic of politics up until a year or two ago. It seems like every time it gets brought up with my friends a big argument breaks out. My parents are also not very talkative about politics so I guess I've just grown up this way. Since I was not as informed or interested in politics,  I believed that voting for a particular party is not fair especially since most of the time I didn't know much about the candidates. Most of my friends who are Democrats would tell me to just vote Democrat because of all their beliefs. I never went with it because I knew that it was totally bias. Within the last year I've become more interested in the government and politics ever since one of my friends said, "so you don't care about the decisions being made in the country you live in that ultimately affect you and your life?" It opened my eyes to the fact that we really should care about the decisions the government is making because it affects us. After talking about Dewey and Lippmann in class, I realized that i am partially in favor of John Deweys way of governing and also Walter Lippmann. Dewey says that we should educate ourselves and that the people need to govern. It makes sense because I don't think 1% of the population should be making all the decisions for our country. But I also see it in Lippmann's way where he says that there are experts out there who do this for a living. They are educated enough to make the decisions in the best interest for our country. So the way I see it, yes I believe that we should educate ourselves on the matter, but there are many people like myself that go uneducated about the government policy making and try to make decisions based on what they think they know. I think that if the 99% of the population was as educated as those experts that Lippmann thinks should be making all the decisions, then those people should be more active in the government with decision making. I think it would be a good middle compromise to both of these arguments.

Parks and Recreation

In the T.V. show, "Parks and Recreation," most of the citizens of Pawnee, Indiana come off as complete idiots. They go to town hall meetings and want ridiculous changes to be made. Leslie Knope works at the parks and recreation department. She is a hard worker, extremely intelligent, and believes Pawnee to be the greatest city in the world. She is running for office against a rich, spoiled brat, Bobby Newport, whose family has a lot of influence in the town because of their popular candy company. The citizens of Pawnee are easily manipulated by Newport's cheap tactics in gaining their votes like handing out candy and giving autographs. The citizens do not even care that he has no past experience in politics. Lippmann's belief that masses are unintelligent prove to be true in this show. Experts like Leslie Knope should be in charge because she could actually help the city. Dewey's belief that people need to govern themselves and should be thinking of ideas themselves would not work out in this town. Leslie has given the people facts about herself and about Newport and the masses do not seem to care at all.

Children's Media

When taking about the effects of mass media on people, most of the time children will be brought up because they are considered to be the most susceptible to this media.  They don't have as much knowledge and information of the world so they don't necessarily understand what not to believe and such.  There have been studies trying to gauge the effects of violent media, sexual media, and media in general on children.  There has even been studies done on the effects of Disney movies on children.  I do believe at the time that there is a correlation and that children will believe what they see in the media in that moment.  I remember seeing a Disney princess movie and wanting to also wish I was a princess as a child.  However, I think it is important to consider that what we believe when we are young and what we believe as adults it vastly different.  I know now that I will never be a princess and I don't think that being the princess is necessarily they best thing ever.  I even heard about a study that said that the Disney movie Lion King was teaching racism and the idea of having a superior race, shown between the superior lions and the lower class hyenas.  I think before we take any study done with these studies shouldn't be taken at face value.  I think most media that is aimed towards children are purely entertainment.  Going as far as saying the Lion King is teaching racism.  It seems like everyone is so enamored with finding out the effects of everything, especially media, for whatever reason.  But I think some things just are and don't need to be scrutinized, for example children's media.

Breakthrough or Surge in Tax Hikes?

I decided to look up news stories regarding the payroll taxes because I wanted to see if any new information has arose regarding the situation. I found it extremely interesting. However, not too surprising. ABC News and Fox News had very different views on the topic. ABC's article was titled, "Breakthrough: Negotiators Near Deal to Extend Payroll Tax Cut" while Fox's title was "Proposed Obama Budget Includes Surge in Tax Hikes." Fox is notorious for its conservative, republican views. It just really interested me to see the same topic framed in such different ways. ABC stated it is a "breakthrough" and a positive move. Fox used the words "surge" and "hikes" as well as "Obama" which is sure to hit on the rhetoric of pathos for a lot of its readers.

News stories and programs are not facts. They are carefully selected, bias stories regarding worldly or local topics. Yes, these stations are a good resource to learn about new topics and situations. However, it is important to remember that a producer picked what stories were going to be presented and in what light.

Sometimes, I think the American public forgets about this or never paid attention to it in the first place. Grossberg believed that the public should be made more aware of situations as well as have more control over the country. I am sure he would want the American public to be more aware of news stations and their bias tendencies.

Braveheart

Based on Lippmann basic human beings get all there information from professional individuals who are trained in that aspect of information and since they are we should leave it up to them to get our information from. Since basic human beings are not trained in such manners that we are unable to make decisions based on things we don't know and we are just blindly making decisions about things we may want to change but overall have not true backing to support our attacks towards an issue that arises. So will in class I was thinking about the movie Braveheart and how all these individuals wanted to change how they were treated and how the country was ran. To Lippmann he would probably say that they are unintelligent human beings who do not know how to structurally organized without the use of violence. It is the resort to violence that they use that Lippmann may argue on  why he believes that they are not capable of having a democracy that works. We should follow the elite individuals who "know" what they are talking about and not try to take things into our own hand and believe that we are truly inform when in-turn we are not. Lippmann may be right on some levels that we need help from elitist to inform us more on issues but I also agree, especially know that we are starting to becoming elitist in our own ways without relying on the few to give us information. I believe that society know is somewhat in between the theories of Lippmann and the theories of  Dewey.