In terms of fair and balanced, these reporters did not do a good job of getting to the “truth of the story”. In the beginning, a reporter said that getting to the fact of the matter is tricky and is more complicated when you find out more. I would have thought that these reporters would stick to this sentiment. However, it seemed like the reporters only wanted to stick to one side of the story instead of listening to the other. They chose to side with the expert scientists instead of a witness that was able to see the account of the yellow rain for himself.  This is the complete opposite of what reporting is supposed to do. Each side of the story should be heard.

In its place, it seemed like the reporter was completely disregarding Eng Yang’s accounts. He repeatedly asked if Yang saw any planes or bees in the sky before the yellow rain fell. By doing this, and downgrading Yang’s story to “hearsay”, the reporter is discrediting one side of the story. This accusation of untruth went so far as to make Kalia Yang cry and leave the interview. This is never supposed to happen. A reporter shouldn’t be allowed to falsify a source’s information so much that a source feels like they are being attacked. On top of that, Krulwich had the nerve to say that Kalia was trying to “monopolize” the story. In fact, it was the other way around. Krulwich seemed to force the bee poop story while Yang tried to show that her uncle’s side to the story should be heard and listened to.

As a reporter, Krulwich should have had more sensitivity toward the topic of the Hmong people dying. He disregarded this fact to try to prove that the experts were right and that an eye witness wouldn’t know what he is talking about, even though Eng Yang was a documenter for the Thai government. The story should have been open to controversy, to finding out if the yellow rain was really chemical warfare or not. It could have turned into an open-ended conversation where people would decide for themselves based on both stories. Instead the chance for good reporting on a heavy issue was bypassed by the failure of the reporters to divulge in their source’s evidence.

First and foremost, if a reporter is going to bring up a stereotype or issue that is important to the public, be sure the readers know what point you’re trying to make. Don’t just give us bare words and expect us to know what you were trying to saying without saying it at all. You’re a professional, so write like one. Regarding the offensive articles on feminine body types and black men with jobs, people have a right to be angry. Especially if these delicate issues are not being handled properly. We can sit here and argue over people being “too sensitive” these days towards topics but this isn’t a Starbucks cup debate. These are heavy issues that haven’t been solved since the 20^th century.

Starting the article on Serena Williams, I would have thought it would be about Williams’s success when they talked about her being bulky having to do with her career in tennis. What really struck me was one quote that made many people, including me, very upset. Another tennis player is immediately compared to Williams, not for her ability to play, but for her physique. She is small because “first of all she’s a woman, and she wants to be a woman.” This quote immediately makes Serena Williams the outsider. It pegs her as unfeminine and manly compared to the small and less curvy opponent. Which leads to my question: “What does body shape have to do with being a woman?” Because Williams is built, she’s not a woman? Or a feminine woman? Rothenberg clearly has no idea or was simply naive to his role in pushing the stereotypical rules that are placed on a woman to look like a cute little lamb that can’t handle her own and needs a big strong man to protect her. Uh no. If he wanted to really dig deep and talk about the issues regarding breaking what is considered “feminine”, he could have just talked about Selena who is in fact, very much, a successful athletic woman. Even with her big biceps.

In terms of writing about Taye Diggs, this knocks out two stereotypes in one article. Being black is referenced constantly and not in a funny way. Why the author feels the need to point out that Taye Diggs is black and a straight man, I have no clue. We would’ve known that already from the fact that he had a wife and there was a picture of him. What shocked me was the failure of trying to turn a heavy issue into a joke. The article says “Diggs, until now, has been the kind of sex symbol you could marry.” Is he no longer a sex symbol because he’s playing a transgender person? This is a heavily sensitive issue to the transgender community, who are still not fully accepted. Then added on top of that is the remark that he is a black man with a job, like black men can’t get jobs or that their jobs are only criminal ones. That’s a serious stereotype the author failed to debunk. Even if it was supposed to be funny, I’m pretty sure no one laughed.

Journalists in Syria may be facing the worst dangers than anyone has ever been through while trying to cover a story. Foreign journalists are sent to get the scoop on what is happening but some don’t come back. In the articles that I’ve read, Marie Colvin was killed by a bomb in Syria while trying to do her job. She was recognized highly for her journalism through the years covering other wars. Yet this time, after her death, people have been iffy about foreign coverage. Other reporters start to realize that if a famous journalist can die, than an average freelancer is in no better shape. More times than we would like, journalists have been kidnaped, raped, tortured, and killed by ISIS groups in Syria. This makes reporters from other countries not want to come to Syria to record what’s happening, which seems to be falling into the extremists group’s plan.

Like foreign reporters, local reporters are not in a good situation to give coverage either. They are also kidnapped and tortured for not following the laws of this Islamic country. Most are even forced out of the country so that they cannot do their jobs. This leads to local journalists fighting back, they take to the internet to give their information for free.

Foreign and local reporters seem to be becoming fewer and fewer in the Syrian war. All these deaths are taking a toll on reporters’ conscious. They don’t want to go out and suffer the same fate as their deceased colleagues. However, it is important that reporters keep going to cover this in the news. The world needs to know about the atrocities in Syria before it gets swept under the rug like the ISIS group wants it to be. If the world is left with in the dark, countries will be once again turning their back on people who need help. During genocide in Armenia, many countries did not come to the rescue of Armenians who were being slaughtered by the Turkish people. This led to a billion deaths and unresolved feelings for the Armenians who lost their land and families with no one to save them. They had to deal with the fact that the world had turned a blind eye to them. This should never happen again. It should have never happened, period. But now we have a chance to make a difference with Syria. Reporters need to show people everywhere what is happening, and hopefully with enough light to the situation, countries will band together to stop the war in Syria.

I believe that the news organization has changed drastically from when it covered politics earlier. I don’t think I’ve heard the ridiculous questions in a political debate before. I felt like this was more for a show, social entertainment, than it was for picking a president of the United States. I found myself asking: When is the important questions going to be asked? When it finally was, I felt like I wasn’t as satisfied as I should be. The question came up of lowering the deficit, yes that is important, but it was more trying to break down a candidate then try to understand what they were saying. And the candidates didn’t do a good job of talking about their plans either. They just said look on their website, which I don’t think is a good way to talk about what you want to do for the country. For people tuning in to this debate for the first time, and have no knowledge, they should have given a synopsis of what they were planning to do for the country.

Beyond questions that should have been asked or just wasn’t answered, when Ted Cruz completely diverted a question to attack the moderators, I felt like this debate was more of a chicken fight. Candidates were yelling over each other, moderators were yelling over each other, most of the time people were attacking each other and trying to make them seem stupid. It was overwhelming. It made me not want to watch the debate anymore. And it seemed like Donald Trump was the center of attention. He always got to speak when he wanted to and it annoyed me that the moderators never really cut him off, Trump still spoke until he was finished with what he had to say.

Many people through social media were upset at this debate. They felt that it was not what they wanted to hear. President Obama himself had words to say about the debate. He felt that the candidates attacked him for not being able to handle Putin but they can’t even handle moderators. The candidates were made to look like a joke, a comical couple of hours of fun. Debates for the presidency shouldn’t look like this. The people need to know who they are going to vote for and what that candidate will do for the country, not what their biggest weaknesses are.

Clearly Richard Bernstein had a vendetta against Sarah Nir. In her surprising representation of nail salons that shook everyone to the core, especially the governor, Bernstein probably must have felt victimized since he was an owner of a nail salon that doesn’t exploit his workers. However, he did not fairly criticize Nir on her article. It is true that there is a lack of transparency but Richard’s argument sounded that a brat wanted to defend himself. He believed that because he is a good owner of the nail salon, that no other nail salons exploit their workers. As we can see from Nir’s argument, that isn’t true. There are cases were people are being paid next to nothing for being a manicurist and that is the story Nir wanted to tell. If she didn’t, ignorant people like Bernstein would still think that workers are being paid average minimum pay like everyone else.

Bernstein makes the main argument that Nir was saying that the “vast majority” are underpaid like her main character in the article. He criticizes Nir for making generalizations and proves that he is one of the owners who do pay their employees properly. But it seems that Bernstein didn’t read the article properly because Nir does show that some manicurists are paid well. It says “Among the more than 100 workers interviewed by The Times, only about a quarter said they were paid an amount that was the equivalent of New York State’s minimum hourly wage.” She does acknowledge that some workers get paid but by using the term “vast majority”, Nir is talking about the 75% of the 100 people who don’t get paid close to minimum wage, not the nail salon employees as a whole.

Richard also brings up the fact that Nir did not cite her sources of where she found the newspaper that said workers would be paid $10 an hour. He went on to show his on sources, conveniently showing wages no less than $70, to prove that Nir was wrong in her allegation, and perhaps even fabricating them. However, Michael Luo does find the ads for $10, showing that Nir was not incorrect. To do an article for 13 months and have such a lengthy argument, I don’t believe that Nir was wrong. However, she should have shown her sources so that people wouldn’t have questioned her and tried to undermine her information. If we saw the clip of the $10 ad, Richard would not have been able to write an offensive article, trying to make his own point of false inquiries.

Both The Jungle and Fast Food Nation show the revulsion of the meat packing industry to expose to the public what goes behind the scenes of getting their poultry at the supermarket. Sinclair and Schlosser write about the uncleanliness of the industry, where there is “blood up to your ankles” and “spoiled meat”. The authors give images to the reader that makes them want to become vegetarians.

However Sinclair approaches the issue of food safety through a family’s dealings first hand with the meat that is processed. It says that Elzbieta had to care for meat that was already rotten and smelled so bad that a person could not be in the same room. It gives the gruesome story of the meat through the rotten smell and the white mold being cut up with rats who defecated on the meat being mixed up in our sausages all because there was no light to see into the dark space that the cow meat were held. This gives a tone of carelessness. The character doesn’t seem to care that the food people are eating is spoiled or mixed with vermin meat. To Elzbieta, she is a machine in the work that she does. It gives a shock to the reader that a person would not seem to care about the health of the food and it makes the reader wonder why.

Schlosser also approaches the issue of food safety by showing that workers are made to be like machines. However, he gives a wider view of how the industry works. He sets out the daily routine, shows us the workers doing every task like you’re on the conveyer belt yourself. Schlosser doesn’t go in depth about the meat itself but the workers cutting and preparing the meat through dangerous and hard labor. In Fast Food Nation, we sympathize for every new character we meet, who loses a finger or arm or has wasted away like the meat they cut up. This story makes us want to help the workers to get out of this sticky situation and build a union that will address these problems that congress did not handle.

Both stories were able to convey a viciousness in their attitude towards the industry of meat. There is a tone of disgust in each story. Sinclair seems to take you into room where the meat is while Schlosser works in the beginning stages of getting the cows to their doom. But Schlosser specifically gets empathy from readers with his story of the workers who were used heavily by their employers whereas we have no opinion of Elzbieta, who we see as a machine rather than a person.

In the case regarding Mrs. Clinton’s personal emails, it seems like reporters may have been too trigger happy. The problem with news coverage is that everyone wants to be the first one to publish a story. They don’t stop to think over the facts they were given because it would be too “detrimental” to wait and be the last one to cover the story than be the first and get the story wrong. Reporters of the Times defended themselves saying that they wrote what they were given from the justice department, that it was a criminal investigation. But it is suggested that the department didn’t even know what kind of investigation they were doing until a day or so later. I think it would have been better for the Times to tell the readers that perhaps it may be a criminal investigation based on what this source has said but it hasn’t been confirmed yet instead of jumping the gun and calling it a criminal investigation because of one person’s view. Margaret Sullivan claims that news should be about “Less speed. More transparency”. I agree with this philosophy. If the news waited to cover the story a day later, they would have been able to tell the correct details of the situation instead of going off on a tangent of one person’s opinion. Also, the reporters should have acknowledged their mistakes instead of changing the facts and leaving the readers confused.

In the case of Edward Snowden, I believe that the news organizations had the right to publish documents pertaining to the NSA surveillance programs. When these surveillance programs were set up after the 9/11 attack, the primary purpose was to look for possible terrorists in their searches, to protect the security of America. However according to the article, The Holder of Secrets, it seems that the NSA is using this intelligence collection “for political, rather than legal” reasons.

Laura Poitras, who made the documentary on Snowden, agrees that the NSA is overstepping its boundaries with surveillance. As a person who wanted to show the truth behind the Iraq war in her films, she had set a target on her back, becoming one of the 1.2 million on the watch list. Poitras is not a terrorist, she has nothing to be under watch for, other than the fact that she was making videos that exposed America to the secret missions that the government was doing. Being under watch, Laura didn’t feel like she could talk on a phone or use the internet freely. Many people have felt the oppression of not having their privacy by the government putting a watch over them.

In the movie “Citizenfour”, a scene is shown where congress questioned Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, on their surveillance program. He was asked if whether the NSA intercepts American’s emails, cell phone conversations, google searches, text messages, amazon orders, and bank records. To each question, Alexander calmly said no. However, you see in both the article and in the movie that Poitras is scared to use her cell phone and internet because she is afraid that she is being watched. Her emails as well as Edward’s emails are encrypted, giving an eerie feeling that they are in a rocky territory,  that at any moment they could be found and thrown into jail. In the black screen of the documentary, these people finally have a sense of privacy and liberty, something everyone is supposed to feel but they do not.

Coming out with these documents in the news, where the public can see what the government is doing, makes it known that people are being watched and they are not as safe in their little cocoon like they believe themselves to be. When asked what judicial consent is required for the NSA to intercept communications and information involving American citizens, Keith Alexander replied it was the FBI who was in charge, basically the government. And if the government is in charge, they could do what they want and claim it’s for “security reasons”.  They can claim that whatever they do is for national security but that leaves a question mark as to why drones are administered in the ending of the movie to watch over millions of people. Not people who are terrorists, but who might be whistle blowers.

It’s important that we aren’t left in the dark when it comes to what our government is doing. And if it takes new papers to get the message out and whistle blowers risking their lives to help Americans save their freedom, news organizations have the duty to enlighten the public. Otherwise, how will we ever know what is happening in the undergrounds of our country?

Firstly, for a story to be able to make it to the headlines, it needs to be a topic that makes money. Looking at the history of Cosby’s rape allegations, it started as early as 2002 and never managed to catch society’s eye until 2015. Why is that?  Considering the money Cosby was making  from his career with his series and movies and promoting family togetherness, it was much easier to make millions off of his good deeds than to try to crush the sales by bringing up the allegations.

Another issue with the news coverage of Cosby’s rape allegations is that it only focuses on the stories of the rape victims. For most of the news websites that I have encountered, they all had similar stories of women who came out to talk about their assault. However there is no proof of these stories being real. Also, with Bill Cosby refusing to come out and answer if he did rape these women or not makes it a hard story to hold on to. Many people will start to believe that the stories are fake or think, “Why are they just coming out now?”. Furthermore, the reader doesn’t get the whole story of the rape assaults from the news. They get the who, what, and when but never the how and why. We’re left wondering if Cosby really did it and if so, why has it been so hushed for a decade? Prolonging the time makes the story less powerful.

With trying to work around not having all the facts, reporters have to bring in other strategies to keep the story alive. For example, it seems like they have created a Pro-Cosby and Anti-Cosby take on the allegations. Articles are published where people believe that the rape victims are telling the truth and then there are articles with people, like Damon Wayans, defending Cosby against these “lies”. These different views of who is right or wrong gets pushed to the forefront that makes the news seem like a war than an informational fact.  The news needs to stick to being information instead of gossip. There’s a very thin line between the two and it seems like the articles I read was more for gossip. We need to stick to the facts and try to get the real answer of if Cosby raped these women than assuming if he did.