232044 Whose News? Journalism and the Media in the USA Today (S) (SoSe 2011)

Over the last 10 years, the news media in the United States have been undergoing rapid transformations, re-organizations,and re-adjustments in response to the cable and digital revolutions and social media explosions of the 21st century. In living memory ( at least in mine!) Americans used to get their news from a few common sources: the nightly news broadcasts on network television, national and local newspapers, local radio stations and a few national magazines. Today there are cable news channels offering "breaking news" 24/7 and filtering that news through various predictable ideological frames of reference. Almost every news outlet has a digital-video component and the Internet gives us access to thousands of blogs and news aggregation sites reflecting every political persuasion and obsession. But that's not all! Facebook and Twitter can instantaneously spread information via networks of "friends" and "followers" so that a story can seemingly "come out of nowhere" and go "viral" in a matter of hours.

In the 1960s, the much-loved and trusted CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite would sign off after the evening's news broadcast with "and that's the way it was." Americans believed they had learned the "truth" or the "facts" of what was newsworthy on that day. But nowadays Americans no longer depend on a commonly acknowledged source of "the facts." Was Barack Obama born in the United States? Do carbon fuel emissions cause global warming? Is the requirement for all citizens to have some kind of affordable health insurance constitutional? Is Julian Assange with his "WikiLeaks" a hero or a villain?Will daily newspapers printed on paper survive the next decade? It all depends on where you get your news.

This course will survey the contemporary media landscape in the U.S.A. and discuss the challenges and opportunities facing today's journalists and media consumers who want to know "what's really going on " in the world, in their nation, and in their own neighborhoods. We will also be following the news as it develops via multiple media sources throughout the run of the course to keep track of contemporary American culture as it is in the process of being created.

Requirements for participation, required level

Students should be at the Profile level, having successfully completed Social and Cultural Studies:N. America. They should also be regular followers of "the news" via multiple English-language media sources. This course might be be of particular interest to those considering a career in journalism.

Bibliography

As preparation for the first meeting, everyone should read this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/truth-lies-here/8246/

You should also be following the developing story and media coverage and researching the background of the events surrounding the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011.

It would be useful also to get into the habit of listening to this weekly radio program on NPR:

http://www.onthemedia.org/ (click on "stream" at the top of the page to listen).