This week in class we had a presentation from group 3 about the book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, written by Danah Boyd. After we discussed and focused on fake news, politics, and digital activism. I learned more after class by watching the video clip of John Oliver talking about journalism and then looked at the article ”Long time NBC reporter quits…”.

The group’s presentation on the book talked about how teens and adults use different social media platforms, the book also shows her actual conversations with teens about social media and not just drawing conclusions based on other people’s theories. At the end the group’s questions really had to make me think about my answer and even left me speechless and not knowing what I would do or say. After their presentation and recommending this book I may look into reading it when I am less busy with school and athletics.

In John Oliver’s talk about journalism he goes on about how the news and media take information that is on newspapers and they find a way to put them in their own stories. These platforms don’t even do a lot of their own research or reports, instead they use others including the newspapers to get the stories they want out of them, but since the newspaper industry is on the fall, there will be no one for the news and media to gather their information. Oliver ended up giving an example of this video where there were two “reporters”, portrayed by actors looking at the daily newspaper and after seeing a story about puppies and another one about a corrupt politician, they decide to go with the puppies story because they believe it is what the people want to see and will bring in more viewers. That is the problem with media these days and that reporters only care about what will bring in the most viewers and how to make the most amount of money possible. I do believe this to be true in current day situation, although I do think it has started to change because people want to be focused on black lives matter, Covid-19, and the election. These are currently some of the most important events in our lives so we do need to be educated on these topics.

After, I read the article about the NBC reporter quitting and I learned that he ended up quitting because of the journalism that was taking place at NBC. Instead of reporting he said it was more like commentary to what was happening in the world, although he does see how this can be a tough spot for NBC as they are supposed to be non biased in their reportings. This has caused the news to be less in depth and not digging deeper into the story they are reporting. For me I believe all news should be unbiased and promoted that way, because I get to see both sides of the story as well as make up my own mind and not the reporter telling me what is right or wrong. I do know that it can be be hard to be unbiased about everything but news rooms have to do their best otherwise we don’t know if e can trust them.

News Article: The very real consequences of fake news stories and why your brain can’t ignore them

This article shows how fake news stories on the media affects us and the others that are being falsely accused.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/real-consequences-fake-news-stories-brain-cant-ignore