Blog assignment 2

God damnit, the Hawkeyes lost. It was a good game,and should be a moral victory for a young Iowa team. They had their chances. Wisconsin is a tough place to play and they are a ranked opponent, The Hawks played them down to the wire. On the other hand, I did go see the Coyotes today with my six-year old son. Now, that's a team that can put some points on the board in a hurry. I regress, this blog is not supposed to be about football, it's supposed to be about our recent guest speaker.

I really did enjoy the lecture that Abhinav Aima presented to the class. As far as the first question of the assignment, I do believe that it takes someone within the media to have the balls to stand up to the government before others will follow. He cited 4 books that all made reference to that topic. Walter Cronkite, during the Vietnam War, shortly after the Tet Offensive, did just that. He came out and spoke about the fact that the U.S. was not winning the war. Just as Mr. Aima said, the media goes with the flow of American opinion. Someone has to be able to stand up and be unpopular, but usually public opinion starts to agree with the original unpopular thought. Unpopular thoughts and messages don't usually sell.

Which brings me to my answer of question 2....

I remember hearing during a lecture in a government class that there are five corporations in the country that control all the media. I think that is a sad state. It does not allow for a lot of unpopular reporting or opinion. If an author of a well written and documented report can get fired or reprimanded for writing unpopular facts and opinion, it takes away from our ability to get information from all sides of an issue. That is crucial in our attempts to become informed citizens.

Question number three.....

Because Sgt. Atwater will be unable to make it for his guest lecture, I think we could advance to the next topic of Micheal Moore and the current day events. You could possibly bring in a speaker from the media department again, or you could contact the on-campus ROTC and bring in someone who has been to Iraq or Afghanistan to make their comments to the class. Either or, it is too bad that he has been deployed, I wish him a safe return.