Journalism principles and freedom

Chapter 9

I agree with Schudson that readers are both intensive and extensive. Many people read works by Shakespear, Emily Dickinson, or the Bible to the point where they can quote almost anything by these authors. I believe that intensive reading is the best way of reading beccause it gives a work more depth and it gives the reader a better understanding of the work. This is why i think it is unfortunate that younger generations aren't reading the newspapers because I think they have better coverage and more in-depth reporting than TV news.

Chapter 10

I thought it was interesting that with some topics, including gang members and sex offenders, journalists are able to be unfair and/or unbalanced because they know most people don't care for gang members and sex offenders. Now, I don't really care for these types of people either, but is it ethical for journalists to throw out 2 of the most important principles of journalism when writing or speaking about these types of people?

Chapter 11

In this chapter, Schudson says that the press in America is the more free of government restrictions than any other country. For the most part I agree with this. However, I think it isn't so much the government here that puts restrictions on the press as advertisers. I think it is important to relate Chapter 11 to Chapter 6 which discussed the influence of advertisers. There have been a number of instances of media being influenced by their advertisers to the extent that articles have been pulled, not published, or the media has been forced to issue retractions/apologies. For example, in Florida, an ABC news channel was trying to report on the fact that Disney World has a bigger pedophile problem than any other theme park because they weren't running background checks on any of their new employees. However, because ABC is owned by Disney the news station was told they had to kill the story. Obviously, any media has the opportunity to decline advertisments, however since 80% of their profits come from ads they may not be willing to decline advertisments even if it means they are giving up some of the rights of freedom of press. In such cases, it isn't the government putting restictions on what can or can't be published rather it is private organizations, such as Disney.