A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

COMM 386: Final Exam -- Fall 2008

Essay question (100 points). Write an essay of at least 1,250 words (five typed pages) in response to the question below. Please feel free to quote freely from the articles you discuss and attribute your quotes. Due Mon., Dec. 1, at 1:30 p.m., the regularly scheduled time for our final.

In “The Elements of Journalism,” Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel of the Committee of Concerned Journalists say:

Journalism provides something unique to a culture -- independent, reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information that citizens require to be free … At stake is whether, as citizens, we have access to independent information that makes it possible for us to take part in governing ourselves.

And like others including the late Neil Postman of New York University, they suggest in America, “News [is] “becoming entertainment and entertainment news.”

Certainly much of this year’s presidential campaign coverage was oriented more to entertainment than issues of governance. Even Paris Hilton got into the act, spoofing Republican John McCain’s ad attacking Democrat Barack Obama as the “world’s biggest celebrity” and prominently featuring a picture of Hilton. Yet in the end most observers say the election was driven by public policy issues, especially economic. And the electorate seems to have swung toward the candidate whose personality and character voters most trusted to look out for their interest after the nation’s financial markets imploded in September and October. The mass media covered it all.

Your assignment: To our class blog, The Mackerel Wrapper, I have linked a column by Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post, headlined “The Pulse of the Pol” (Oct. 22, linked below). It features his profile of Obama, whom he had interviewed recently, and quotes from other articles about topics including Obama’s character to accusations by the McCain campaign of bias in the media, rumbling noises in the right-wing blogosphere, both sympathetic and decidedly unsympathetic, of GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Using Kurtz’ column as a focal point, evaluate the news coverage of the 2008 presidential election. How representative are the stories Kurtz linked to Oct. 22? Was the coverage biased? If so, to whom? And on what issues? How well do you believe the media served the interest, in Kovach’s and Rosenstiel‘s words, of giving us “access to independent information that makes it possible for us to take part in governing ourselves?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/22/AR2008102200764_pf.html

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.