Tiger is the man.

To conclude with my last blog for the semester, i am going to talk about the hottest story in the news. Tiger Woods is the talk of the town right now. Why? Because we love controversy. This happens all the time but since it is Tiger Woods we are all on it. To make matters worse, nobody expected this from him. If it were me it would be different but nobody expected it from him. He is very conservative and quiet. Everybody thought he was just a good man, a superb golfer, and never expected anything like this out of him. Since the first initial story, all it has done is grow legs. There are so many more allegations, so many more women, and Tiger’s reputation is being ruined by the minute. We do this to celebrities all the time. Anytime we can bring down a celebrity does we take the opportunity. However, the incidents that are occurring with Tiger Woods occur everyday. I don’t even think if it were another celebrity that it would be this big. I can’t even turn to look at some source of media outlet without hearing something about that man. He is living every mans dream. He has tons of money and tons of women. What more could you ask for?

East vs. West

The other day i was watching “Notorious” the movie. It is based on the life of the famous rapper the Notorious BIG or Biggie Smalls. He was a big time rapper from New york in the mid 90s. 2pac was another big time rapper around the same time but he was from California. At one point both of these rappers were good friends. Until one day 2pac was shot and robbed in New york. The media jumped on this story and quickly started pointing fingers at Notorious BIG and his crew for the incident. Soon after on a magazine cover appeared 2pac and the notorious Big’s wife just to stir up more controversy. Then the whole world started picking sides and this was the beginning of the East vs. West fued. It was either 2pac or the notorious BIG on the cover of magazines stamped with headlines that read East vs. West. None of the rappers were claiming sides until this incident. The media was more involved in the fued than the actual rappers themselves. The fued went on for about a year until 2pac was shot and killed in Las Vegas. A few months later the Notorious BIG was shot and killed in Los Angeles, California. Both murders are still unsolved till this day but with the fued it is hard to pinpoint any suspects. ultimately, I feel the media are at fault for both of these young rappers lives. They started the fire of this whole controversy. People love controversy so thats what the media feeds them. The buzz these stories received was outrageous. Magazines were sold, CD’s were sold, Money was mad but at the expense of both these rappers lives.

Black Friday

I currently work at Best Buy, one of the biggest retail stores in america. I was working the night before thanksgiving and customers kept asking for a copy of the black friday ad. Everybody was eager to get their hands on a copy of the ad. Little did they know, employees at best buy had not even seen the ad themselves. Best Buy tried to keep the ad as confidential as possible. As I was working the night before thanksgiving , many customers were already asking if they could start lining up. As I was clocking out that night my manager handed me the ad. I was amazed that only a few things were on sale, and for most items there were only a few in stock. The commotion in commercials and the ads drive people crazy to make them think there are many deals when there really isn’t. Many items they just threw a SALE tag on it and people went for it. Other items were already on sale and customers thought there was something special about it that day. I work in the cell phone department and we have had the same prices for about a month. I activated more phones in one day than what i usually activate in a week. All this day was cause more traffic in the store to have them buy items that they didn’t even think about buying. Speaking of traffic, it was horrible on the way to the mall. It took me forever to get in the parking structure then took me even longer to find a parking spot. Thank you retail and thank you black friday.

UC fee hike.

Lately what has been in the news is the proposal to raise tuition fees for in state students. All Uc’s have been affected because of the fee increase. The students of all these schools have been protesting to try to stop the tuition increase but they did not budge. On the news, they showed the students protesting, students pleading for officials not to inscrease the fees, and the actual deliberation. For the most part, on television the protest seemed peaceful except for a few clips where the police was shown shoving students out the way. The way the media covered the story was very bias in my opinion. Of course they showed the students acting like radicals and the police being completely peaceful. Just like in other situations which i have been a part of, the police can’t seem to take control of the situations or keep their cool. I am almost sure a lot more occured than what was actually shown.

Flu Shot

Recently in the news, all we hear about the flu this the flu that. Probably making the actual flu seem a lot worse than what it really is. Last week at Santa Monica College,  they were giving out free vaccine shots for the flu. The day before, my professor told me to come early because it would be crowded and hectic. i didnt think much of it, i was going to treat it like any other day but when i arrived the parking structure was over crowded, traffic was a lot more heavy, and there was a lot more people present. although i have heard the flu is really bad, i also heard that it’s not as bad as people make it seem to be. As usual, the media causes this big commotion to make people scared. That day i arrived at school i didn’t think it was that serious. i didnt even think once about getting the flu shot because i dont go crazy over what I hear. People probably called off work to wait for the vaccine all day. Stood in line as early as 7 in the morning. The lines were longer than the financial aid office on the first day at school. If we saw stories in the media about people actually saying the flu wasn’t that bad, there would not have been so much commotion that day. Not only have they done it with this story but many others.

Marketing

In class we discussed how different newspapers cater to different groups. Whether it’s by age or by race, it is all made for different people.  I was looking through “La Opinion” it is a newspaper published in spanish. Although it is published in spanish it should still have the same news that is published in english newspapers. However, just by browsing through the sports sextion i noticed the difference. When I looked through the sports section of the “Los Angeles Times” there were baseball pictures and a huge article on the Los Angeles Lakers. When I looked over at “La Opinion” it was a completely different scene. The Los Angeles Lakers weren’t given that much importance. Baseball was given a nice sized article but i believe that’s because most baseball players in the MLB are hispanic. About 90% of the sport section articles were about soccer. Many if not all hispanics enjoy the game of soccer so their sports section caters to that audience. Besides the sports section there was more than just a few article that differentiated the two newspapers. The ads that were posted all over the newspaper were a lot different. In the Los Angeles Times their were many ads on pills and businesses but in La Opinion there were only ads on auto body shops and gardners.

News is news. I didn’t know that it changed when it was in a different forum.

Gang Rape in Richmond, CA

According to the Los Angeles Times in Richmond, California at a school homecoming dance, a 15-year-old girl was raped by multiple males. As she was being raped multiple on-lookers didn’t bother to call for help. Now the media is all on top of the school and classifying them as savages. Seems to me that the discussions we have in class are true about news being more like entertainment. Although this doesn’t affect the country, it made nation wide headlines. This is a  story that is out of the ordinary, we are not accustomed to seeing this everyday.  To make matters worse this took place in a inner-city of northern california. Unlike in other related articles, the Los Angeles Times didn’t show any sympathy towards the girl who was violated by multiple men. She was actually portrayed as an accomplice to the whole situation. They emphasized her being drunk, wild, and half conscious. Had it been one person instead of multiple men this story would not had made head line news. Had it been at a random location and not at a high school it would not have been on nation wide news. These are the type of stories that keep our eyes glued to the paper and our ears open to the news.

Entertainment not news.

I was surfing the web recently and I ran across a story that an average person might not hear everyday. A woman lost 2 of her kids in a fire. When she was interviewed, she was more worried about her food stamps being lost in the fire. She showed no sympathy or pain for her 2 children that had just been lost in the fire. There are fires almost everyday and people die from fires almost everyday. The difference between those stories and this one is the entertainment effect it has. You would expect the women to be in tears for she children but instead she is worried about money. People get a kick out of that and that’s what keeps us glued to the tv and makes us want to tune in the next day. The news has to be mixed in with a little entertaining news or else many people would be bored out of their minds. The same goes for newspapers but i don’t feel they do it as much as Television.

Rain

In southern California we have probably the most beautiful weather. After enduring a very warm summer we had a drop a rain a few days ago. Many would think of it to be  pointless and meaningless but the way it was all over the news you would be shocked. The top story of the night was about the rain, not somebody who probably died that day or an update on the economy. The late night tv shows made a mockery of the news and how they were portraying the rain to be a big deal. This is way i don’t like to watch the news that often even though i love to stay on top of what is going on in the world but it is ridiculous that people are complaining over spilled milk. i could understand if it doesnt rain in southern california but it does. in fact, it rains every year around the same time.

i believe there is a lot more important news out there to be reporting. the media always tries to shed light on news that will mostly benefit them because for the most part in my opinion all news channels are bias.

Nobel Peace Prize

On October 9, 2009 my main man, Barack Obama, received the Nobel Peace Prize. The president himself was shocked when he realized he won the award. The Nobel Peace Prize is an honarable award but it doesn’t get as much publicity as it should. Barack Obama joined many other influential leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Theresa. I would imagine him joining this group would give him some type of air time. Although he isn’t the first president to win the award, he is the first african-american president to win the award. I watch the news every morning before school and work, I heard one very short segment about it. This is the man that is running our country, i would think we would be proud that a man from the United States won such prestige award.

In my opinion, it all goes back to us not having our priorities together as americans. We seem to put a lot more emphasis on events that don’t matter and don’t recognize what does. I also feel if he wasn’t an african-american president there would be much more coverage on this story. However, I expected this story to get lots of coverage just for the simple fact that he is an african-american man.