Skip to main content

Final Blog Post


For the final blog post, we were assigned to watch Good Night, and Good Luck", this film dates back to the age of the 1950's. It depicts the relationship between the press and the government, this was during the time when Joseph McCarthy was a senator. Edward R. Murrow was the journalist televising McCarthy's accusations of communism.

Transhistoral 

The term Transhistoric means the "quality of holding throughout human history, not merely within the frame of reference of a particular form of society at a particular stage of historical development". A simpler version of this definition for me would be something that stays throughout time, something that you see repeatedly over and over again in different periods and eras of history. A very known transhistoic moment would be between the press and government. This is a recurring conflict that never gets resolved. During the Civil Rights era, the president's administration wanted to confine what journalists were allowed to say and write about because they didn't want the government's agendas to get out. This again happened during the McCarthy Era when someone tried to speak against the government they were seen as the enemy. Today, we see that with Julian Assange, because he leaked videos that affected the government, and were being hidden. In return Assange paid for it. Basically, throughout time the government finds ways to shut the press down, but it never completely works, especially now that more people are seeing it happen. In current day, we also see our president on social media platforms going back-in-form with the press. He often calls them out for spreading "fake news."


One of the many tweets of Trump using the term "Fake News"
The Chilling Effect

According to The First Amendment Encyclopedia the chilling effect "is the concept of deterring free speech and association rights protected by the First Amendment as a result of government laws or actions that appear to target expression." Wikipedia says something similar: "discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction." What this means is that the government uses their power to make laws, orders, and threats so that we don't use our rights, so we don't use our first amendment to our advantage. The chilling effect was used in the film, when many journalists did not want to cover what was happening in America because they were afraid, they would get prosecuted. In today's age, we can take whistleblowers being prosecuted as an example of what happens when you use your first amendment right to expose the government.


The Sixth Amendment 
"the right of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances." In other words, the right to TALK BACK to the government." 
This is something that I have found very interesting, the fact that this is a part of the sixth amendment, yet it's as though this does not apply to The Press, tragic right? In the film Good Night, and Good Luck, everyone was afraid to talk about the government, therefore, talking back to the government was a no no. Murrow was one of the few that was able to do both because he knew it was what needed to be done. In a way Murrow was an advocate for the rest of the journalists who were afraid to get punished for speaking out. This reminds me of Jorge Ramos, the journalist I wrote about a few blogs ago. He called out the president at the time for breaking a promise, he did this because he knew he had to advocate for those who can't or don't have a voice.

In Conclusion

The film was very interesting and taught me a lot about this era, because before being assigned this blog I never knew of the McCarthy era. One thing that I noticed and was my biggest takeaway from it, is the fact that CBS was upset with Murrow because of his show and the way he was influencing the viewers. This makes me think that for big networks like Fox and CNN only show what makes the party they align with look good. Even though major networks are not affiliated with one particular party they tend to sway one way or another so they censor and remove anything that will have a certain party look bad. This goes to show that the government still tries to have certain power over our news sources.
Something else that I can grasp from this film is the fact that we are a democracy but sometimes don't act like it or support each other like we should. There should be a checks and balances for the government itself because they try to overstep, when the outcome Is not what they expected. Of course, communism is not the answer, because the way China runs it would not be a good idea for us.

Overall the film was great and has brought more issues to my attention, or more so added more to certain issues I already knew about.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Modern Journalism, same as always.

Penny Press, Yellow Journalism, and Muckrakers. The news that we receive today and the news Americans received in the 19th Century are not as different as one would think. Sure, we know have social media, youtube videos, and TV to receive up-to-date news but the overall forms of news haven't changed. Three journalism forms that took a stand in early America were the Penny Press, Yellow Journalism, and Muckrakers. Penny Press The Penny Press were newspapers that became available to the middle and working class beginning in the 1830's. They were from 1 cent , so it was quite affordable for people of the two lower classes. People were eager to receive what they thought was raw news, but instead were filled with sensationalized columns that had more fib than truth. Journalists and owners of these newspapers focused on the idea of pleasing its audience and essentially giving them "what they wanted", does this sound familiar yet? Although this form of newspapers wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The First Amendment

You should be glad we have it On December 15, 1791 the United states adopted the first of the ten amendments that would be known as the Bill of Rights. The first amendment states, “ “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the  right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” . This amendment exists to this day and protects the American people from having certain freedoms taken away from them.  In the United States, we encourage our people to speak of anything they wish even if it is negative towards their government. It is written so that the government cannot interfere with our beliefs and the way we choose to express ourselves. Although we have this freedom, the first amendment does not protect those from putting ourselves or others in harm's way with our speech.This exception is not to i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Journo Hero

Ellen Browning Scripps Why is she a hero? Ellen Browning Scripps was born on October 18, 1836 in London. Throughout her life she experienced a great deal of hardship at a young age. Her mother passed away when she was just 4 years old. After this tragedy, her, her father and the rest of her siblings moved from England to the United states. This was in 1844. She was born one of 13 kids and was the only one that continued her education to a higher level. Although she was the only one to receive a higher education, she later helped her siblings to better their careers with what she accomplished. For example, for many years her career was teaching, but later on one of her brothers started a newspaper called “ The Detroit Evening News” in 1873 and Scripps decided to invest into the newspaper. She later invested in her other brother’s newspaper “The Cleveland Press.” In addition to her investments, she also contributed columns as well. Journalist Side Aside from investin...
Post a Comment
Read more