Choose a local or national newspaper from one of the following websites.
Front pages may be accessed online at: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ or Canadian articles can be accessed at: http://www.canada.com/national/index.html
Copy two articles that you think contain value judgments or show the types of bias outlined in the Media/Political Bias article. Paste them here, into this document. Highlight the word(s) and/or sentence(s) that they believe introduce a bias into each story, and answer the following questions for each one:
1. Why do you think the words convey a value judgment?
2. Are these words or phrases found in a news story, a column, an editorial or a review? Why is this significant?
Woman accused of trafficking drugs worked on Tories' donor database
OTTAWA - The Conservative Party has admitted that an accused drug trafficker worked on its database of sensitive donor information before she was charged with trafficking marijuana and contributing to organized crime.
The Conservatives said in court documents that data entry clerk Tammay Desabrais, 41, had access to the party's proprietary donor information system before she was arrested by Ottawa Police after a yearlong investigation into auto insurance fraud and drug trafficking called Project Yardwork.
Despite the criminal charges, Desabrais is suing the Conservative Fund Canada in small claims court, claiming she was wrongfully dismissed from the part-time job she had held since 2008. She is seeking $6,850 in damages and $704 in back pay.
The Conservatives' admission that an accused drug trafficker had access to some of their most confidential information on contributors comes a week after the release of a report to the federal privacy commissioner that raised concerns about the confidentiality of data held by political parties.
Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said the party is satisfied none of its information was compromised but would not comment further or say what steps it took to ensure no information was leaked.
In a statement of defence filed earlier this month, party lawyer Arthur Hamilton said Desabrais's duties included ``the receipt and processing of donor financial information, including credit card numbers and related information, as well as accessing and reviewing confidential information contained in the party's donor data base.''
Her position, the party said, ``required a high level of discretion, security and confidentiality given the employer's nature as a political party.''
Desabrais said she had worked for the party on a part-time basis since 2008 and was last year promoted to the position of ``revenue officer.''
She earned $14.36 an hour and worked about 40 hours weekly, she said. The Tories did not give her proper notice when they terminated her job last August, she claims.
The Tories argue that Desabrais ``abandoned'' her employment by failing to show up for work on July 26th and 27th - the date the Ottawa Police announced her arrest along with six others. The party claims she was being held without bail.
Desabrais, of Gatineau, Que., was charged along with Dave Cleroux with selling small amounts of marijuana. Cleroux was charged with selling vehicles at a metal recycling facility in conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.
Three other people charged in the same investigation, all with the surname Cleroux, have pleaded guilty to various charges and have been sentenced to probation and non-custodial sentences.
Desabrais was terminated ``without cause'' on Aug. 2 with a letter from Dan Hilton, the party's executive director, who made no mention of the arrest and thanked her for her service to the party.
The Tories also said her association with those convicted or accused of participating in a criminal organization involved in trafficking, conspiracy and laundering the proceeds of crime was ``fundamentally incongruous'' with her employment with the party.
Desabrais's lawyer said the party's allegations are mostly erroneous and not substantiated by fact.
``The last time I checked unless you are convicted of a crime you are not generally assumed to be a criminal,'' said Ricardo Smalling. He said she intends to persist with her lawsuit.
In a report released recently by Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, researchers wrote that as a result of media coverage of the robocalls controversy, Canadians have learned about ``the previously opaque internal practices of political parties'' and the use of personal data of voters, including by offshore telemarketing firms, raising ``unanswered privacy-related questions.''
The Conservatives' database of donor and voter information, the Constituent Information Management System (CIMS), is considered the most sophisticated in the country but recently drew the attention of Elections Canada investigators. They found that lists of voter phone numbers used to making misleading robocalls in Guelph on election day matched CIMS lists of identified non-Conservative supporters.
The month before the drug arrests, a Conservative website was hacked and 5,600 email addresses of party financial contributors were released online.
The report prepared for Stoddard warned of ``trends that are unmistakable and concerning,'' since voters' personal information may be compromised by security breaches committed by political parties.
Desabrais and Cleroux are next due in court June 18.
When making a decision about how morally or ethically sound an action or statement is, humans intrinsically judge the merits of a decision, action, or statement based on how it relates to analogous circumstances, given the information available, through the filter of our cultural and personal moral values. Such a judgment is called a value judgment. Value judgments can also be extended to defining the utility of something. In a more positive sense, value judgments can be said to be made when the available evidence is carefully evaluated and any decision made is done based on accepted moral standards and not personal whims and feelings.
The above article details the story of a woman who was accused of drug trafficking and subsequently dismissed by her employers, who happened to be a political party in Canada. She worked for the mentioned political party and excelled at her job. By the very nature of her employment she had access to sensitive information namely, the donor database of the party. She states that once she was accused of insurance fraud and trafficking, her employment was terminated without cause.
The authors of the article have made value judgments in their work, and this evident in the fact that while they have described accusations and details regarding her alleged involvement in illegal activities, they continually argue that she should be presumed innocent until she is proven guilty in court and that her employers acted hastily in not waiting for her verdict and dismissing her. It is claimed that the allegation proved enough for her employers and they decided that such negative publicity would prove harmful for their establishment and so they chose to judge her prematurely terminate her employment.
The above published piece is an article in a newspaper and this is significant because newspapers are held to be objective, non-judgmental sources of information. The entire nation will read this story and the language used to describe the treatment of this woman will be highlighted in the mind of any reader. This is significant as more and more people read such articles, it influences their own thinking and the language used to convey the authors own judgment will impact their own judgments and how they make decisions in their everyday life.
Last summer a group called Ladies Learning Code made its debut on the Toronto tech scene.
It aimed to increase digital literacy amongst women through a series of tech workshops. The sessions were an instant hit, creating a small horde of women who wait with impatient fingers, eager to click ‘buy’ each time tickets to a workshop go on sale.
Now the four co-founders behind the non-profit are launching a new business.
It’s called HackerYou and like Ladies Learning Code (LLC) it has a mission at its core. As Heather Payne, one of the co-founders, explains, the goal of HackerYou is to disrupt tech education with a new learning model.
The three-month program, which costs $2,800, will consist of evening sessions hosted by instructors who are working programmers and designers, not academics. Classes will be small (a 10:1 student-teacher ratio) and lessons will focus on hands-on learning. Class time will be spent coding, not learning theory, Payne says.
Upon completion there is no certificate of any type.
“If you care about a certificate, HackerYou is not for you,” Payne says. “The reasons you come are because you value this style of learning, the type of experience where it is about building a portfolio, not about putting in the hours.”
HackerYou’s first session, which is planned for September, will be an introduction to web development. Payne explains mentors will mold the courses according to their expertise and says HackerYou plans to eventually offer everything from design skills like Photoshop to languages like HTML, CSS and Javascript.
HackerYou isn’t necessarily for future programmers. Payne explains the school aims to help students become more digitally savvy, even if they aren’t planning to work specifically in tech.
“It feels like there’s a bit of a language barrier sometimes between people who ‘are technical’ and people who ‘are not technical,’” Payne says.
“We need people who feel very comfortable working with developers because that’s how you get better products and better technology,” she says.
HackerYou is banking on students valuing an understanding of computer software and the web as an asset to work in any industry.
It’s also counting on the good will its founders have built up with LLC. Payne and the other co-founders are hoping to convert some LLC loyalists into students willing to lay down a much steeper fee.
Payne, for one, is confident.
“I’ve seen the magic,” Payne says. “I’ve felt the feeling in a Ladies Learning Code workshop where it’s people learning new things for the first time and being so inspired in each other’s presence.” “I want to transfer that over to HackerYou,” she says.
The article’s title is where the bias begins: “HackerYou aims to disrupt tech education”. Upon reading it, the reader initial thoughts are directed to expect the organization or course described will deal in subversive or obstructive activities, something that will hinder the tech education process, when in fact the reality of the article is diametrically opposite.
The article is about a group of women who are trying to revolutionize the tech education process by incorporating new dynamics of teaching into it which involve a more practical hands-on approach that improves the audience’s tech proficiency rather than create certified experts with a rigorous theoretical knowledge base.
Enrolled students do not learn from instructors but instead from actual programmers and instead of learning the theory behind programming and web design, they perform and execute. No certificate is awarded upon completion and the purpose of the entire exercise is to impart applied knowledge and skill in a structured, accessible environment.
The authors of the article make value judgments by comparing routine and known “orthodox” educational processes with this new style of teaching and learning, which is presented in as radical and unorthodox. The emphasis of the style of teaching is different from that of the usual classroom education system, but it does not appear so radical and unconventional when one realizes the desired course results. A typical education and teaching system provides you with a certification achievement of a particular level of education or skill when you complete the requisite coursework and examinations. The form mentioned in the article involves no particular aim for certified competency or graded expertise and simply aims to teach novices or those with a fundamental understanding to gain or polish applied technical skills to increase their overall computer literacy and fundamental technological understanding without particular emphasis on an underlying theoretical basis.
These words and phrases are found in a news story and they are significant because they are the words that highlight the bias or the general direction of the article. They demonstrate the view of the author and the general slant of the newspaper, including how neutral they aim to be, and thus prove to be very significant in terms of this analysis. Such words are also the key in looking at the stance of the author as a journalist, whether he is on the “left” or “right” so to speak, for this issue .
Coverage Analysis
Should the Coverage Fit the Crime?
1. Comment on the guidelines that have been created by KVUE. Do you feel that they are reasonable criteria for news reporting, or do you think they go too far? Are there guidelines that you would add?
Ans: The criteria set forth by KVUE correctly determine the type of news to be aired. Crime and violence stories have a great impact on people and the way they think. The way news stories are sensationalized in order to make them thrilling and exciting influence people’s perceptions about not only crime, but public safety, the state of their society, and the effectiveness of the state security apparatus. Selectively narrating the horrendous and dreadful accounts of others’ sufferings can have traumatic effects on individuals and serve to disseminate misinformation and a selective narrative that harm the ability of families to grieve or the courts to prosecute and dispense justice. To provide the public with tabloid accounts of torment and agony for the sake of entertainment and to scandalize them is immoral, unethical, and delivers a blow to the credibility of journalists and news organizations. Therefore news stories must be filtered before they are circulated among the masses.
2. Why do local stations or newspapers rely so much on crime reporting to boost ratings?
Ans: Crime, violence and accident stories are heavily relied on to increase ratings. Local stations and newspapers believe that by circulating such news they will be able to attract more viewers. Broadcast of such events have been proven effective in capturing viewers’ attention because of the fear and visceral reactions they tend to elicit from viewers. TV and print news publications compete for audiences with the entertainment industry, which often use violence and gore as a device to attract audiences. To some degree this has desensitized audiences to violence and gore, decreasing the audience’s ability to be interested, unless they are entertained, shocked or scared, and hence news-reporters believe that the only way to capture the attention of their viewer base is by providing them with scandalous and sensational news. This results in an greatly increased dependence on a lurid and tabloid telling of the news.
3. Do you agree with the statement "Sensationalized reporting fuels fear and makes people feel powerless." Why or why not?
Ans: I agree with the above statement. Sensationalized reporting does fuel fear and make people powerless. The gruesome and horrific accounts of people’s deaths and murders send a wave of fear and terror among the community causing people to panic and feel helpless. When a crime takes place locally and it is told in a sensationalized manner it often forces people to realize that they too could’ve been the victim and that in the instance the protective agencies would’ve failed to save them. This increases the concerns about public safety and makes them worry about their own wellbeing.
4. By implementing these guidelines, KVUE journalists believe that they are delivering "responsible reporting" to their viewers. Critics argue that these guidelines are a form of "self-censorship", that people have a right to hear the news, even if it's violent. From the article, find four comments in support of KVUE's philosophy, and four comments against their approach to crime reporting. Which do you agree with most?
Ans:
"A big congratulations to KVUE for the efforts to keep unimportant violence off television.”(1)
"We are not interested in gory details about who got smeared on the interstate, who got murdered, etc." (2)
"I think that it is commendable for a major TV news station to really take a look at responsible reporting, commendable from a community service standpoint. Sensationalized reporting fuels fear. It makes people feel powerless." (3)
"I have not missed the crime or the mayhem or the stabbings. It's like my life is much more settled, it's calmer. We know crime's going on. In our neighborhood, we're trying to be pro-active about it, but we don't need to see it every day."(4)
Some viewers consider the KVUE experiment an effort to avoid reality. "Grow up, the world is violent. Your ignorance of it doesn't make it less violent. It only makes it more palatable to you when you stick your heads in the sand."(1)
"Frankly, hearing about violence is the least we can do to remain connected with our fellow citizens, our kin, who experience such tragedy. The reporting should not be sensationalized. Pictures may not always be appropriate. But the reality that people kill and are killed on a regular basis is newsworthy. We need to hear it." (2)
5. Review KVUE's decisions regarding the following stories: the triple murder in Elgin; the murder/suicide at the University of Texas; and the drive-by shooting in East Austin. What journalistic decisions had to be made in each case? Do you agree or disagree with the way in which they were handled?
The decisions regarding three of these stories were similar. All three of these stories were kept off air because they did not meet the criteria set forth by the guidelines. In my opinion the decisions made were correct because in all three of these stories, there was no threat to society at large and therefore there was no need to air these accounts of murder and spread a wave of panic and misery among society.
6. Adopting these guidelines has not been easy for the journalists involved. What are some of the ethical dilemmas that KVUE's journalists and producers have faced?
Ans: Journalists and producers at KUVE have faced many ethical dilemmas since the initiation of this program. One of the problems faced is that in the event that a crime does not meet the criteria established by the guidelines, they must not cover it, but this has resulted in journalists questioning their professional responsibility towards society. Another ethical dilemma they have faced is in having to decide that one particular life is more important than the other when reporting on multiple stories.
Hoax? Scholarly Research? Personal Opinion?
Choose one of the evaluation tasks and view the recommended websites. Copy and paste the task evaluation questions here, and then answer them.
Authority and Accuracy
Pick any two sites from the list below. What evidence can you find to determine the basis for claims made on these pages? How could you tell whether or not the information provided is accurate?
Questions to consider when reviewing web pages for authority and
accuracy.
1. Can you determine who put this page together?
2. What is the background, credentials, or authority of the author of this
web page?
3. How would you verify the information presented on this web page?
Feline Reactions to Bearded Men
This page contains an article which is scientific in nature and is about, as the name suggests the reactions that cats had to bearded men. In summary, the experiment involved showing different cats the pictures of bearded men and noting their reactions. The cats and pictures used were consistent between experiments. The beards of the men in the pictures varied and were of many different shapes and sizes.
5 photographs and 214 cats were used for the experiment. Unique and interesting facts included 15 cats giving birth while watching the photographs and 3 dying (due to causes not related to the photographs).
We can determine the accuracy of the information provided by asking ourselves some questions, such as those stated below, which are then followed by their answers.
First, the information provided on the page is all scientific data and the authors of the experiment and the paper have given their names as well as their results. A full bibliography of all of the references used has been provided for anyone wanting to check on them and updates to them are also posted on the site under the bibliography portion itself.
Coming to the answers to the questions that are task related, it is easy to see that the page has been made by “Improbable Research” and that they are maintaining it as it is on their website.
Improbable Research is more than just a web page, as it releases its own magazine, has its own TV series, newsletter, and newspaper column. They organizes live TV shows and publish books and conduct an awards ceremony every year. The website can be considered to be accredited because its editorial board consists of over 50 scientists, some of which who have even won the Nobel Prize, reflecting a strong panel of competent scientists. The site is open to everyone and anyone can submit an article to be published but it is not published unless it is accepted through the verdict of the editorial board.
Further, the website can be contacted and an address to its office is also given which can be used to verify the organizations existence and credibility. The names of its senior members with their designations are available on the site along with their personal contact numbers and email addresses along with their fax numbers.
The information provided on the web page can be verified in numerous ways. In order to do so, the experiments can be re-done with the exact same methodology and the results can then be compared with the original.
Virtual Medical Clinic
The page that opens on this address contains numerous links and advertisements. The page is a free page operated by “godaddy.com” which is a provider of internet domains. The page contains discount offers and other coupon offers of the same nature. The page immediately seems dubious and unsafe.
Since numerous products are being offered on the page, the only way to make sure the site is legitimate would be to see reviews by other customers on the website or from a more credible website, but as there are none to be found; again this makes the page look suspicious. The vast majority of the site’s content aims to market products or asks for money before gaining access o a page or feature, and with internet and credit card fraud a common occurrence on the web today, it is extremely essential for buyers to be careful of whom they trust with their personal and financial data. By the same token, even if such pages are legitimate, The features and layout or the site do not demonstrate suggest good security features or trustworthiness. The onus is on the website to prove to potential consumers that they are legitimate and trustworthy.
Returning again to the answers of the task related questions, it is evident from the outset that this page has been created by “godaddy.com” but godaddy.com is not credible as it has no verifiable contacts or addresses/ phone numbers or even names of people running it.
Most importantly, the organization is a domain provider and hence has no interest or accountability in the accuracy or safety of the content of the domains it provides. While godaddy.com proclaims itself the #1 domain provider in the United States of America, there is no evidence to support this. It appears to involve a great deal of effort and research to ascertain even basic questions regarding godaddy.com and the content it hosts or its credibility. The requirement of such an extensive effort itself and the appearance of fraud is enough to put off even the least discerning consumer.
The only visible credentials of the author of the web page (godaddy.com) is that it is the #1 domain provider in the United States of America and as mentioned earlier, there is no proof provided on the website of even this claim.
There is no way to verify the information on the web page because there is no verifiable information on the web page. There are only offers of discounts and coupons that can be availed but this would be extremely risky as it requires a user to input their credit card information, which could lead to a much larger potential loss compared to the gains to be made if this a scam.
References
1. McGregor, Glen, and Stephen Maher. " Woman accused of trafficking drugs worked on Tories' donor database." . Canada.com, 23/05/2012. Web. 7 Jun 2012. <http://www.canada.com/Woman accused trafficking drugs worked Tories donor database/6668418/story.html>.
2. Martin, Russ. "HackerYou aims to disrupt tech education." . Canada.com, 06/06/2012. Web. 7 Jun 2012. <http://blogs.canada.com/2012/06/06/hackeryou-aims-to-disrupt-tech-education/>.
3. Catherine Maloney , J. Lichtblau, Sarah, Karpook, Carolyn Chou and Anthony Arena-DeRosa. "Feline Reactions to Bearded Men." . www.improbable.com, October 1999 . Web. 7 Jun 2012. <http://www.improbable.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html>.
4. . "Virtual Medical Clinic." virtualmedicalclinic.com. godaddy.com, n.d. Web. 7 Jun 2012. <http://www.virtualmedicalclinic.com/>.
