Scholar Current Events class #2

We had some very good discussions on current events today.  We discussed the Occupy Wall Street protests, and the different ways they are portrayed in the media.  The different viewpoints on the same events are in great contrast, and really reveal how biases show up in the media.  The mainstream portrays them as disorganized and confused, the right as criminals behaving like animals, and the left as a progressive grass root populist movement.  All of those viewpoints are true to some extent, and we can actually get a fuller picture of what is really happening in the world when we listen to both sides of a story.

We discussed liberal and conservative viewpoints, since that is the most frequent type of bias we see in American media.  That led to some discussion on the liberal view of equality, equity, and socialist welfare, verses the free market view of equal opportunity, self-reliance, and private welfare.  Incidentally, President Uchtdorf's talk on welfare during the recent LDS Conference was a really excellent portrayal of some of the Lord's welfare principles.

There was also some interesting discussion of good secrecy and bad secrecy in government.  We found some example of when it could be good, such as when keeping difficult negotiations away from public lobbying and criticism, and when it could be bad, such as the secret wiretapping allow by the patriot act.  The good secrecy is usually temporary, since the results are made public at the end.

We are continuing the assignment to read or watch the news.  I recommend watching 3 shows each week or reading 6 news articles each week.  I also asked them to prepare to give a brief oral presentation on something they found interesting in the news.  (By "brief", I am expecting 30 seconds to a minute, but you can take longer if you want to.) 

I also assigned the students to watch a documentary video about Noam Chomsky and his book called Manufacturing Consent.  The video talks about Noam Chomsky, whose book Understanding Power we will be reading later, and it lets Chomsky talk about how the media works in America and the ways biases can show up.  The video is called "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media."  It is available at the Orem Library if you want a DVD version, or you can watch it online at hulu (you may have to wait for ads before it starts) or google video.  We will discuss some of Chomsky's ideas about how the media works next class.