"Faux" News and Reality TV

First, I would like to extend a kudos to the groups that presented in class on Tuesday. It really takes guts to go first.... and each group chose a very interesting and informative topic.

When it comes to news, I will admit that I sometimes watch Fox News ONLY because I feel that they update their news ticker at a decent speed for me to read what is happening in the world. Much to my dismay, I do not watch news shows in their entireity because I am constantly on the go... as many of you know. I'm lucky if I can sit down and eat...
One thing that I have a problem with FoxNews is that it is "trendy and cool" to watch FN. I don't think so, only knowing half of the facts was not cool the last time I checked. I just think that the station is marketing to our age group and they are suckered in daily. I also enjoyed the analysis of rhetoric used by Stossel, Russert, and O'Reily. As a COMM major, and hoping one day to be in the profession, I have followed the works of the first two mentioned. I encourage each of you to read Stossel's book entitled, Give Me A Break, the same name as his show. I found Bill O'Riely to be overly obsessive AND extremely offensive. The video clips were priceless...


As for Reality TV, I liked the pictures used in the presentation. As people in my majors stress, visuals and their presentation is everything... and I liked how the visuals were very current to what is actually seen on TV this season. The articles were nicely reviewed and evaluated the use of rhetoric which it seems people in our class can't get enough of. I would have liked an audio clip of Simon Cowell saying that someone sucked to drive home the impact that our society has put so many constraits to have what it takes to be an "Idol"... and here I use that term loosely because Mr. Cowell stands to make a lot of money if the chosen one is a best seller and chart topper since he owns the record company.

As for the beauty shows, I will agree with a previous posting that something is not right with our society when people have to go on television shows to fix themselves and hold themselves to another person's concept of beauty. I would not have a problem with this show if they were strictly helping people like the deaf girl and the fire victim that I mentioned in class to have a more normal lifestyle. However, the producers of this show modify these women into WHAT THEY think is beautiful and then subject them to a competition among all the people on the show, even twin sisters during the 2nd season of the SWAN that wanted to be different. Give me a break...