Monitor Power and Offer Voice to the Voiceless

“Journalists must serve as an independent monitor of power” is one of the elements of journalism, and that notion is still practiced by many contemporary journalists. To monitor what government leaders or powerful business elites are doing is essential for citizens to be free and self-governing. Throughout journalism history, many brave journalists seek to expose and uncover corruption of businesses and government to public. As citizens are informed about these abused powers, they will demand government to reform.
Original investigative reporting, interpretative investigative reporting, and reporting on investigations are the main forms of today’s practice of investigative journalism. These forms of journalism have accurately reported and documented what government and business are doing. However, I think the citizen journalism will be the dominant way to monitor government because many citizens frequent use the Internet to read the news among themselves through blogs and other internet forums.

Watergate Forces the President to His Knees

The Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s efforts to uncover the Watergate scandal have helped American people to secure the democratic form of government. Without these two brave reporters, the country will be controlled by a dictator. The methods of gathering information about the scandal were very resourceful. The reporters had to rely on anonymous sources and the Deep Throat to get the information because the scandal has linked to the oval office and President Nixon.
Bernstein and Woodward came from different background and political belief, such as one was republican and the other was democrat, but they all knew that as reporters they had to get the facts right about a event without any fear. When the reporters tried to get the information they needed, the government constantly threaten the Washington post and its reporters; however, the Post still continued to support the coverage of the Watergate scandal despite the government threats. The Post had fulfilled to be an independent monitor of government power.

The Civil Rights Movement

Television news has done a great job to awaken American people about the realities of black oppression in the south, and also television news pushed the Civil Rights Movement into the American consciousness and into the national agenda. Television news presented its audiences with vivid images of African Americans being beaten and brutalized by white American people rather than describing how the brutal events took place. Television audiences could see live coverage of the Civil Rights Movement and how policemen misused their powers to punish the peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham. The power of images has aroused strong feeling about the equal rights among all American people.
There is an old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, that truth has used by the television news to cover every single brutal treatment that African Americans had received. Every image of brutal scenes and demonstrations has delivered to audiences’ TV screen, and it made the crisis clear in the whole country. Without television news’s coverage of the crisis, the Civil Rights Movement wouldn’t occur. Seeing is believing. TV audiences have to see the course of crisis otherwise it didn’t happen.

"Good Night, and Good Luck"

The film “Good Night, and Good Luck” is very fascinating film. I think it well reconstructs the roles of Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly during the Joseph R. McCarthy era. Their news program See It Now is the cornerstone of the new electronic journalism. It showed to the American public that the television has taken the role as public service from the newspaper journalism. The newspaper journalism has failed to protect and inform to its audiences about the tricks McCarthy had used to manipulate Americans’ mind during the communist threats.
To expose Joe McCarthy’s tricks, Murrow didn’t write about how McCarthy’s methods have used. Instead, Murrow showed his audiences about McCarthy’s televised performance in order to prove what kind of man McCarthy was. Murrow used excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches to criticize the senator and point out where he had contradicted himself. The technique Edward R. Murrow has used to expose McCarthy was unique and very effective.

The New York Times’s article “Army Doctor Held in Ft. Hood Rampage” by Robert D. McFadden

It is very horrifying and devastating about what has happened in Fort Hood Army post in central Texas, and I feel very sorry for the victims’ families. The gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan himself a psychiatrist trained to help others’ mental health, has “killed 13 people and wounded 30 others” according to The New York Times’s article “Army Doctor Held in Ft. Hood Rampage” by Robert D. McFadden. It’s another shooting rampage since the incident at Virginia Tech in 2007. The gunman has been shot four times and was hospitalized. In the day of this incident, some journalistic reports have misled the information about the rampage, but it was quickly corrected according to the Times’s article. At this devastating moment, people can not be misinformed about the incident; people need to know the facts about the incident, so they can give some proper response to it.
I think racial discrimination, prejudice, and pressures from military life led Hasan to kill many of his comrades. Hasan might have built up this pressures and stresses during his military life to the point that he couldn’t take it anymore, and finally he exploded himself and turned himself into a merciless killer. President Obama has given some comment on this crisis. He said that “‘to get answers to every single question about this horrible incident’”, and also I believe that we shouldn’t just hurriedly reach to the conclusion about the incident, and we need to get some basic facts right, so the incident will be effectively resolved.

The New York TImes's aritcle “Bloomberg Wins 3rd Term as Mayor in Unexpectedly Close Race” by David W. Chen and Michael Barbaro

We have some surprising results on New Jersey’s and New York’s election campaign. Christopher Christie became new New Jersey’s governor, and Michael Bloomberg is still our New York City mayor. It doesn’t matter who win the official position. The important things that what will winners do for their citizens in coming years. The New York Times’s article “Bloomberg Wins 3rd Term as Mayor in Unexpectedly Close Race” by David W. Chen and Michael Barbaro, many people felt that Bloomberg has re-elected as third term New York City mayor because he had poured a lot of money in campaign spending; however, his rival, William Thompson, didn’t raised much money for his campaign.
I believe that the primary reason Michael Bloomberg has won the campaign because people have seen he had done very good job during his last eight years. He has improved the education system, encouraged citizens to use public transportation and built the like lane alone the city, and he also effectively handled city’s economic system during the September 11 terrorist attack and the economic downturn. I don’t blame him for overturning term limit because he has proved himself that he was qualified to be re-elected. I still support Michael Bloomberg for running his fourth New York City mayor if that is possible.

Chapter 2--Americans and Their News

The beginning of this chapter states that the “disseminators of news have connected American citizens to the shared events that shaped their national experience”. Indeed, with the advancement of technology and transportation, citizens will get their news more reliable and faster than even. Many today’s newspapers are originated from the “penny news”. In order to attracted more readerships, the early newspapers began to improve the quality of the newspaper and the distribution method. They started to lower papers’ price and cover various social issues. Therefore, citizens can easily obtain the information they need to know, and they will change their viewpoints about a particular event.
As radios, televisions, Internet, and other electronic devices emerge, the news spread more quickly to every part of country. The electronic news becomes the main tool for accessing the news. Citizens can view live event through televisions, such as the Kennedy assassination. Newspaper begins to report and reveal the news about wrongdoings of politicians, crime investigation, celebrities, and other matters. With these abundant information the newspaper has covered, many citizens feel overwhelming. As a result, they only care about the big news, such as the terrorist attacks on September 11. However, I believe that citizens still care about the news because muckrakers have aroused the public awareness about the dark side of the society.