Blog 2- Increasing Amount of Affluent New York 3rd-8th Graders Opting Out of Testing

200,000+ students sat out NY’s standardized test in 2015, many are from richer districts. http://t.co/vlymfztaOn pic.twitter.com/Y0kJBhPBue

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) August 16, 2015

1. This article shows the exploding amount of 3rd through 8th graders in New York that are opting out of Common Core Standardized Testing by school district. I picked this article because Common Core has been met with resistance from mainly affluent families, which would ruin the integrity of the test’s data. Teachers job performance ratings are based in part on these standardized tests and they are used to identify achievement gaps throughout the state as well.
2. The data was collected from the New York State Education Department.
3. Why are more affluent people in New York opting out of these standardized tests than those from disadvantaged communities? How is this legal if federal law requires 95% participation in Common Core standardized testing?

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Blog Post 1: How Often is the BMI Misleading

Yes, you can be “skinny fat” or “healthy obese.” How body fat percentage tells a different story than BMI http://t.co/7zLlpsDxgy

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 28, 2015

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1. This article is about how the BMI scale may be an incorrect indicator of body fat levels. I chose this article because obesity is something that the United States has struggled with for a long time and many of the studies done have been based off of the BMI scale.

2. This research was done by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in which they surveyed 5,000 people’s body fat levels across the country in 2005-2006. This was done by measuring people’s height and weight as well as their body fat percentage using a DXA scanner.

3. Taking into account the data represented in this article, how can we create a system that more accurately determines body fat levels and be used nationwide.

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Blog 7: Psychological aspects of Partisanship and Choosing News Media

As I talked about in Tuesday‘s post, I don’t think objective media is plausible; bias media will always be around and it’s time for us to accept that subjectivity comes naturally with informed research.  Regardless, citizens tend to view media in line with their own beliefs, whether it’s good or not.  With so many media outlets, citizens have to search for their own news; naturally, they’ll go toward their own beliefs.   

Watching partisan-oriented news comes from our “perceptual screen”; you hear what you what to hear and block out the news out-of-line with your partisan beliefs.  Innately, we don’t want to be told our views are wrong, so we’ll quickly turn away from opposing opinions.  Reinforcement is key!

Selective perception means that we perceive things according to our own partisan beliefs – a liberal person would be easily turned off by the conservative Fox News, as a stark Republican wouldn’t want to pick up a liberal New York Times.

Yes, this doesn’t promote openness to other ideas and Americans become more polarized to their own opinions.  Even if we view other partisan channels and media outlets, we will have selective recall – remembering those facts that support our own opinion.  We cannot be fully informed to all points of view, but there’s no way to find complete, objective media.  It’s not good or bad, it’s inevitable in my point of view.

Cognitive dissonance confuses us - we like our ideas to be reinforced

For a great example of cognitive dissonance inthe news, check out the following article about the “Baby Joseph” case in Canada and how the right-wing media has portrayed it.

Roles of Journalist During Times of Crisis

It’s hard to say whether or not journalist should challenge the leaders in times of crisis and war. I think it definitely depends on the timing. In class we discussed how President Bush waited until September 20th to address the country after the 9/11 attacks. Just as Bush waited to address the nation appropriately, I believe this is how journalist should handle themselves in times of crisis. Immediately following the attacks the press did a good job in supporting what the government officials had to say. The question is did they wait to long after to begin challenging them. In the movie Buying the War, this is exactly what was discussed. I found an interesting article that was published October 17, 2001, which was a little over a month after the 9/11 attacks. There were two main points that I found interesting, that do a good job of summing up the role of journalists at the time.

When National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asked, rather than demanded, that bin Laden’s statements be more carefully and tightly edited by American networks, she made both the appropriate and the politically savvy choice

The reason that the media believed this to be a politically savvy choice was that Condolezza Rice requested this from the media not demanded it. This is a good point. I believe that if the media and the government officials could work more closely then the critisim the media puts out would sounds less threatening. I do think that the media has some obligation to challenge what the government is putting out there. Many Americans depend solely on the opinions of others on the events going on with our country. If the media is not at all challenging what is being released by the president and his staff, then no one will really think twice about what is going on. The other line from this article that I thought did a good job explaining what happened around 9/11 was as follows:

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Frank Rich has noted that this administration, like any other facing a crisis, has sought strenuously to sell its own version of events while vigorously contesting any criticism.

This I thought was another accurate point. The Presidential staff want to make themselves look the best that they can. They do not want to admit mistakes, nor does anyone else. I think the media has an obligation to point out these mistakes. This allows for citizens to have a better understanding of what is going on. I think as far as war time goes, there does not really need to be a grace period for criticism. War is a very controversial issue so there are going to be many views on the topic. I think it is good for viewers to understand both the pros and cons of going to war. To end here is a video I found about Obama speaking of 9/11. The main point just seems to be that the media nor anyone else should challenge to 9/11 story.

Blog 1. Where do I get my political information?

I don’t want to call myself as a political junkie, but I love and crazy about world politics. I love those dynamics, conflicts, and obsessive to see how media portray them based on their own interests and political ideologies. I get my political information from a variety of sources and thanks to new technology I use lots of gadgets and devices to catch the latest news as much as I can. I am not quite sure my sources of politics are diverse enough in terms of ideology-wise, but I think I am still pretty fair-minded.

Here are my political sources

Twitter

People’s comments from news sites.

NPR

The New York Times

The Guardian

Al Jazeera English

From my friends, family members, and professors.

About a year ago, I started to do twitter, and it became my main source of getting political information. As Naomi Cho said in the earlier post, ” the information in the twitter is very simple, summarized and easy to read.” In addition, I think, it is very lively and very active discussion going on politics between people in Twitter. Furthermore, thanks to ‘list’ function in it, I select very intelligent and huge newsmakers’ personal twitter accounts and put it on the list to read their ‘personal voices’

I love to listen and read NPR. I think NPR is one of the credential and trusted sources among the U.S media. In most of times, NPR deals with real news, and tried not to sensationalize it. As a journalism student, NPR did a great job to diversify sources and show insightful analysis based on facts gathering by themselves. I think it is needless to say that The New York Times, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera are one of the finest newspapers in each continent where they are located in.

Reading People’s comments on NPR, The New York Times and the Guardian are really interesting, because such debates on these website are, most of time, very intriguing and very knowledge based.

Lastly, I get my political information from my friends, family members and ‘some’ professors. I think talking politics with people are very important process to internalize political information to my own knowledge. Not even discussion, just talking with them, I can organize my thoughts on certain political topics and finally own the knowledge.

Blog 1: Where I find my political information

Being born in the modern digital age, I get most of my political information from the internet. When I’m looking for a quick and easy way to access information, I usually browse the news section on my internet’s homepage, which is MSNBC.com. If I want a more in-depth look into political information on the internet, I will occasionally visit the New York Times. During the times of major elections, I usually tune my TV to CNN to see any breaking news stories and receive continuous full coverage on the elections. Emabarrassingly enough, I do have to admit that Facebook is also a forum where I receive some political information. If I fail to stay up-to-date with any political news, it seems that my friends never fail to post their thoughts about it in their statuses. After reading their posts, I will always go to the New York Times or CNN.com to validate that news story. I find that these two news sources seem to be the most reliable and trustworthy when dealing with breaking news. Being an avid user of computers, the internet seems like the easiest way to find a cornocopia of political information and competing points of view.

Blog 1: Where I Get My Political Information

Information comes at us each in every day from phone calls and text messages to television, Internet and newspapers.  With all these options, it’s easy to get bogged down and put up a perceptual screen to unfavorable opinions.  When I get my political news, I want to be well-informed, yet entertained to break up all of the clutter.  While I value opinion pieces in the New York Times and Time magazine, I need quick, fact-based news, like I find in the Week.

I am an active Twitter-user, and I follow users including The Daily Show, Politico, The Economist, the White House, Anderson Cooper, and CNN Politics.  I have found that these sources can inform me quickly on the important matters of each day, and if I want to know more,  I follow-up the information with their host sites.

I typically don’t have time to watch television, so the Internet defines my political information. I will admit that I catch C-SPAN when I can to witness political activities nearly firsthand.  My parents watch Fox News, but it is too partisan for me.  I prefer news sources that are not so blatantly obvious in their opinions.

Jane Hirt from the Chicago Tribune did an interesting piece about the Tribune’s “Red Eye” Project targeted toward millennials, titled “What do Millennials Want in their News Anyway?”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOHEiPL_v1o.  Our generation is drastically different from those before us – always on the go and in an age of technological advances.  My capstone group has done extensive research on this “Youth and Young Adult” group, or the YAYAs.  To find insights on the demographics and how the news media can best reach us, check out this link: http://www.mojo-ad.com/node/59.

Blog 1: Political information sources

I get my news from New York Times.

Results – Sources of political information for Mizzou undergraduates

I did a quick count of where everyone said they got their political information from and here are the results.

The most frequently mentioned source of political information was CNN, which received 10 mentions.

Next was parents or family members, mentioned 7 times.

Here are the rest of results, with number of mentions in parenthesis:

National Television Sources (20)

• CNN (10)
• FOX News (6)
• MSNBC (2 w/one mention of Keith Olbermann)
• NBC (1)
• ABC (1)

International Television Sources (2)

• BBC (1)
• France televisions (1)

Local Television News (one specific mention of KOMU) (2)

Newspapers (20)

• New York Times (4)
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch or stltoday.com (4)
• Columbia Tribune or Missourian (3)
• USA Today (3)
• Maneater (1)
• Wall Street Journal (1)
• Chicago Tribune (1)
• Dallas Morning News (1)
• Le Monde (1)
• International Herald Tribune (1)

Online Sources (13)

• Newsy (2)
• Huffington Post (2)
• Politico (2)
• Google news (1)
• Military.com (1)
• Yahoo news (1)
• Gallup (1)
• Rasmussen (1)
• The Hill (1)
• John Combest (1)

School (social studies, political science classes) (3)

Other TV shows/networks (2)

• E! Entertainment News (1)
• Colbert Report (1)

Radio (1)

• NPR (1) – but this was a grad student, so maybe doesn’t count?

Family/Parents (7)

Friends (1)

Like I said, this was a quick count, so I might have missed or miscategorized something.

But overall, traditional sources (TV stations, newspapers, and family) led other sources. However, often the mentions of a traditional TV or newspaper source was actually of the website for that source, so I got the sense that most of the political information sources for the class are online sources. A few people specifically mentioned CNN apps for an iPhone.

Anyway, what else stands out from these results? We will discuss further in class on Thursday.

BLOG 1: Staying Informed

Before I started college, I really only got my news from CNN. I read it every morning at the beginning of my newspaper class. Then I came to Mizzou, where the journalism classes required daily readings of The New York Times, The Missourian and Columbia Daily Tribune. You not only had to have read the major stories on the homepage but be able to recall precise details. I relaxed with my devouring of these news outlets after the class was over but I still use the Columbia-based newspapers to stay in touch with the happenings of the community.

However now I use CNN rather than the New York Times because I like their user compatibility. Their site lets people upload content on a special part of their website as well as shows the constant popularity of all other their stories. New York Times allows some of the same features but CNN takes it to a new level. Their organization not only reports news all over the world but as well as what users find interesting. CNN uses the principle that journalists should report they facts, in addition to the business plan of relating the news to their audience’s dispositions.