Terry Schiavo and the Law

The purpose of laws and governments (Democratic) is for the protection of life. This is society’s justification for creating such structures and entities that through these devices we (society) hope to obtain a better life for mankind. The funny thing about this is that it is only for interspecies interactions, to protect man from man. The essence of laws and procedures is to fairly protect each person, particularly those that can’t stand up for their selves. This notion that every human life is precious is based on our Judea-Christen values where most of our laws are derived from.

In regards to Terry Schiavo I am not sure anyone is really sure what Terry wants,
and that is all I am sure of. I also know for me that where to draw the line is that if you have to err; human life deserves the benefit of the doubt. Laws and procedures designed and implemented for the betterment of life became more important than Terry’s life

Ward Churchill vs. Dr. Thomas Klocek

A comparison contrast essay is one of the things you have to know how to write to get a college degree. This is an essay where the writer takes two subjects and compares what is similar with the two subjects while contrasting the differences to come up with a meaningful explanation. The two subjects I want to examine are Ward Churchill and Dr. Thomas Klocek.
Both of them are college professors. Both are mired in what has been described as a “free Speech” issue. While Ward Churchill is a tenured Professor at University of Colorado, Dr. Thomas Klocek has taught at De Paul’s Chicago University for 15 years.
They both are considered to be popular teachers with full classes. Both of their predicaments were caused by speech that has been attributed to each professor.
It was the speech that was attributed to each professor that contrasts start to emerge. Ward Churchill called the victims of 9-11 “Little Eichmanns,” this is not alleged but verified through the professor’s own writings. On the other hand Dr. Thomas Klocek’s utterances are only alleged, and are disputed. The folks that Dr. Klocek offended are the
members of two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and United Muslims Moving Ahead, with whom the Doctor had a twenty minute debate with. Ward Churchill’s public pronouncements offended a majority of the public while Dr. Klocek’s private debate offended the people he was debating with. An honest difference of opinion between debaters’ verses public speeches is a sharp contrast.
Dr. Klocek does not have any of the issues of integrity that have been hounding Ward Churchill. Amid charges of plagiarizing others works, falsifying his own ethnicity,
and threatening those that dare to stand up to him, Churchill has retained his job. Dr. Klocek has not been so fortunate having been suspended with pay for autumn semester and suspended with-out pay for the winter semester.
The overall contrast is why Ward Churchill’s speech is considered free speech and Dr. Klocek’s speech is not afforded the same 1st Amendment protection. Apparently some speech is more equal than other speech.

The previous 4 posts were from a paper I did a couple of years back in a sociology class. The Instructor proudly declared at the beginning of the class that she was a communist which caused me to temper to a certain degree what I really thought in regards to this paper on media bias. She earnestly believes that a product that costs $2.00 to make and sells for $10.00, all of the $8.00 profit went back to the original manufacturer. Also that the $2.00 cost of the product would cover all capital costs, overhead, R&D, advertising costs, distribution, and labor costs. Having worked in the manufacturing sector for the past two decades I pointed out the errors in her assumption to which she responded that I did not know what I was talking about and that she was the instructor and I was the student.
I persisted that if her assumption was factual then a competing company would make the same item and sell it for less to gain market share and there by erode any possible usurious profits. Her response was that corporations don't act that way and thus we have corporate greed determining the cost for goods and services. This is what the next generation of Americans are learning and I fear for the future.

Sorting Out Truth

Bias seems to be in the eye of the beholder. In other words if one has a strong point of view, all differing points of view will be considered inaccurate and manipulative. To really perceive bias, one has to be neutral to an issue in order to objectively determine whether a story is slanted to a particular point of view.
There is an assumption an individual (we, I) can ferret out the truth from a slanted story while a third party is easily influenced. The real danger is when this “ Third Person Effect” is used as a measuring stick for public opinion, which is not accurate due to our own projection. This could account for the public’s cynicism of government, press, and a lack of voter participation.
The liberal left is disproportionably represented in the media. Being human one cannot help but to report as one’s own eyes sees an issue. The real problem is lack of equal reporting of opposing points of view.
Truth nowadays seems to be a relative thing based on ones own views. There are no universal truths just the way each individual interprets information. Our culture has become Machiavellian, where winning at any cost is condoned. One of the largest radio sports talk shows Jim Rhome’s Jungle has a motto “ If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying”! Society has to reestablish the values of integrity, honesty, and morality.
My reaction to writing this paper is tempered due to the fact that I’ve tried to keep my own biases in check in order to create a paper that is objective as I am able. The most important reason for this is for my own desire to maintain honesty and integrity. Personally, I have thought for a long time that the news is managed, especially when you flip channels, all news programming showing the same story at the same time with the same story line. Even the weather is in the same basic time slots through out the networks news programs.
Research is time consuming and overwhelming in our information age. With facts and statistics one can be pick and choose and take out of context to achieve whatever the researcher is trying to convey. This is scary when society relies on information in 10-second sound bites.

ARE LIBERALS OVERREPRESNTED IN THE MEDIA?

If journalists are over represented on the left compared to the general public, and as people see things through their own ideological eyes, then are we the public truly getting balanced news and editorials on important issues?
According to Bernard Goldberg in his book Bias; in the 1992 Presidential Election, 89% of journalist voted for Clinton compared with 43% of the people that are not journalist that also voted for President Clinton. 7% of journalist voted for Bush while 37% of voters voted for Bush. 2% of news people voted for Perot while 19% of the electorate voted for him. 85% of the reporters who cover the White House vote Democrat. If this is true as Bernard Goldberg asserts then we should see a surge in ratings toward news outlets that are non-liberal. Fox News advertises it’s self as fair and balanced and Fox News had an average of 656,000 viewers watching at any time throughout the day in January. CNN averaged 596,000, according to Nielsen Media Research data provided by the networks. The story was largely the same in prime time -- all despite the fact that CNN is available in 9 million more homes than Fox News. The largest radio talk shows are conservative Rush, Dr Laura, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingrham, etc. The only other syndicated radio show that attracts as many listeners is Howard Stern.
Tammy Bruce in her book The New Thought Police actually accuses the media of trying to influence public opinion. She says “ If honesty is your standard, then suddenly the truly sneaky, untrustworthy rags are “Time” and “Newsweek” publications that purport to be objective and non-partisan while they take you for a ride”. Untrustworthy Rags is according to Tammy is what the left calls publications such as “American Spectator” and “National Review”. These publications you know going in their right wing bias because they advertise it. She goes on to say they(the media) pretend to be unbiased to better manipulate the public.

THIRD PERSON EFFECT

Research indicates "abundant support" for third-person perception (Perloff,
1993, p. 167; see Gunther & Hwa, 1996; Lasorsa, 1992; Perloff, 1996;
Stenbjerre & Leets, 1997). At least two studies indicated that more than 90%
of respondents perceived greater media impact on others than on themselves
(Paxton, 1995; Tiedge, Silverblatt, Havice, & Rosenfield, 1991). As a result, they believe that they are largely unaffected by media messages, even when they are influenced. This tendency may result in seeing oneself as particularly discerning about biased media messages while perceiving others as unduly vulnerable to biased messages.
In forming and expressing their own opinions, people often consider the
opinions of others. An uncertain voter, for example, may decide to go along
with his impression of the majority view. A passenger on a plane may not voice
her own opinion because she thinks those around her would disagree. Many such
consequences of perceived public opinion have been documented in empirical
research (see, e.g., Henshel & Johnston, 1987; Noelle-Neumann, 1977).
Mass media constitute the major source of reference for information about the
distribution of opinion" and that "the `powerful effect' assigned to mass
communication is a subtle one. The media are not perceived as agents of direct
influence, but rather as reporters on the distribution of(acceptable) opinion. In other words, people assume that what the media is saying today must be what the public will be thinking tomorrow.
People can easily form an idea of what others are thinking by inferring
it from the information they think others are getting. And this inference is a
comfortable strategy because it is an autonomous one. Like any inference, it
is a conclusion people come to themselves, rather than a fact they receive
from others.
In spite of the many reasons people may have for making such an inference,
we know from a multitude of data and the theoretical ideas discussed above
that people are susceptible to misjudgments about prevailing opinions. Indeed,
the literature defining pluralistic ignorance (Merton, 1968; O'Gorman, 1975)
is founded on such inaccurate perceptions of public beliefs. Many perceptual
errors can be linked to a well-documented human inclination to simplify
judgments by using intuitive tools, or mental shortcuts (Kahneman, Slovik, &
Tversky, 1982). These everyday shortcuts require less mental effort and allow
for simplified thinking, but as a consequence they are prone to error(Spin?).
The most influential cue of all is internal: one's own personal opinion.
Research demonstrates that for a gauge of the opinions of others people
commonly rely on their own opinions, projecting them onto the public mind.
Story slant does have a significant influence on estimations of public opinion and
perceived opinion is indirectly affected by slant via personal opinion. Thus
people infer public opinion from their own reading of media coverage. But more to the point, slant of news coverage exerts a consistent and independent influence on perceptions of opinion--an important test of the tenacity of the persuasive press

HOSTILE MEDIA(BIASED)?

Is the media biased and there by perceived as hostile? As individual human beings we all perceive information, people, and situations in our own unique way. We all have our own mental grid in which we use to perceive the world around us based on experiences, education, and beliefs and it is through this grid that we interpret what the media is trying to communicate to us.
The hostile media effect describes the tendency for people who are highly
involved in an issue to see news coverage of that issue as biased,
particularly as biased against their own point of view. Anecdotal evidence of
this effect is commonplace: liberal groups typically describe the media as a
lapdog for corporate interests, while conservatives tend to see it as a
left-wing conspiracy.
But, in fact, quite a bit of news content does have some degree of slant. Many
news stories, by virtue of the events they cover or the sources they include,
would be seen by disinterested observers as favoring a particular point of
view. Most journalists presumably believe they cleave to a professional
standard of objectivity or balance, but most people in the media audience may
not see it that way.
The prospect of evaluations of news content with an apparent slant toward one
side or another puts an interesting twist on conceptualizations of the hostile
media perception. If even neutral viewers would not rate the news as neutral,
how is one to assess the conjecture that highly involved partisans are prone
to biased perceptions of media bias? The answer is that, while the perception
of bias is an inherently subjective evaluation, the hostile media perception
does predict an objective and testable outcome
The first published experiment illustrated the hostile media perception
dramatically. Vallone, Ross, and Lepper (1985), showing news broadcasts of the
conflict in the Middle East to Arab and Israeli students, found that both
groups saw the news as biased in favor of the other side. The phenomenon was
highlighted by the fact that nonpartisans saw the same content as neutral. The
researchers proposed two central explanations. One, a perceptual bias,
suggests that partisans actually perceive and recall a disproportionate amount
of disagreeable content. The other, an evaluative bias, argues that partisans
assess the same content using different standards, so that attempts at
evenhandedness are nevertheless seen as unfair. A more detailed discussion of
theoretical background can be found in Giner-Sorolla and Chaiken (1994).
If one has a strong identification to a particular side of an issue no matter what the media says, it will be construed as biased.

becoming conservative

This paper is as much about my self as it is about media influence and its effect on public opinion. As I journey through life I have become keenly aware of the consequences that occur when choices are made based on faulty data.
Growing up I watched in disgust as the president of my country (President Nixon) was caught lying and covering up illegal activities of the Republican Party. President Ronald Regean scarred the hell out of me with his hawkish rhetoric. I was pretty liberal going to “no nukes concerts”, supporting NORML, abortion rights, environmental issues, and other similar causes. At that time I thought the left were more concerned about individual freedoms. When President Clinton was elected my thinking was this change in leadership is probably a good thing even though I did not vote for him (I voted libertarian). I thought Rush Limbaugh was clueless and had no love of anything, especially animals. My perceptions were based on opinions I gleaned from people in the media. I particularly remember a radio show with Dr Dean Edell praising the new Clinton administration and the liberalizing of abortion laws and how this would be a boon for fetal cell research, at the time I thought it was a positive move.
The Vietnam War horrified and fascinated me. I was transfixed because I could see a possibility of me having to make a decision between going or leaving the country, and also horrified by the shear brutality and senselessness of war. Over the years I studied the Vietnam War and became friends with some Vietnam Veterans (one of my best friends was in Khe San during the Tet offensive). As I am assimilating all this it became obvious that the NVA had no chance to win the war through military warfare. The NVA knew this so they also orchestrated an effective political offensive through the media knowing we (the U.S.) would give up and walk away just as the French did. This campaign was so effective that a resounding defeat (the repression of the Tet offensive) was portrayed as a major victory in the US press for the NVA where even Walter Cronkite said the Vietnam War was unwinable. I think this is the point where media (they) had an epiphany of how much influence they exert in the forming of public policy. In essence what I’m looking for is truth. I was taught that the role of a free press is to inform the public and hold the government accountable, not to manipulate public policy to a particular ideology.