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[lil5223]

Network News Comparison

Article one: NBC

The first article I found was from NBC news and it was about how the Germanwing’s co-pilot Lubitz appears  to have intentionally brought the airbus down. The article included a video of a news reporter discussing what happened. The article basically talkedd about how the 27 year old pilot Andreas Lubitz crashed the plane into the French Alps. During the entire descent the pilot didn’t say a word, he made no distress signal or radio call. It’s been said that this may have been a suicide and that he deliberately made the loss of altitude of the aircraft possible. This crash killed 150 people, victims included sixteen high school students on an exchange visit, babies, businessmen and two opera singers. The current interpretations is that the co-pilot had a desire to destroy the plane but there hasn’t been anything to indicate a terrorist connection yet.

Article two: NY Times

The next article written about the same topic was from New York Times. This article was titled “Germanwings Co-Pilot Deliberately Crashed Plane, Prosecutor Says.” The article starts out by saying “The co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525 deliberately crashed the aircraft, French officials said Thursday, pointing to voice recorder evidence that he had locked the captain out of the cockpit, ignored his pleas for re-entry and steered down into the French Alps as passengers were heard screaming.” This article, unlike the first sounds like they are much more sure of this happening.  The article says that the intention seemed to simply be “to destroy the aircraft.” They talked about how the voice recorder showed that the co-pilot had been breathing until before the moment of impact, suggesting that he was conscious and deliberate in bringing the plane down and killing 144 passengers and five other crew members on Tuesday.

Another difference in this article is how they talked about the victims. “The German Foreign Ministry said half the dead were Germans, including four dual citizens. Most of the others were from Spain, with a smattering from other countries. Three were from the United States.” 

This article also went into more detail then the first. It talked about where the fight was headed and how during the first 20 minutes of the flight the pilots spoke in a cheerful and courteous way. Nothing seemed abnormal at all. “The commanding pilot then asks the co-pilot to take over, and the noise of a seat backing up and a door closing can be heard.” “At this stage, the co-pilot is in control, alone,” the prosecutor said. It is when he is alone that the co-pilot manipulates the flight monitoring system to activate the descent of the plane. The prosecutor said that this action could only have been “voluntary. The control the co-pilot activated requires several turns, Mr. Robin said, and it could not have been turned to such a low altitude accidentally.

That is an example of some of the detail included, but it goes into it a lot more explaining what was heard in that airplane before it crashed to the ground. 

Third Article: CNN

This article like the first, included a video. This video was different because it focused on Lubitz family. It starts off showing the family’s house and how it is under investigation. His grandparents live in a nearby house but are unwilling to speak about him. This video focuses around people that were close to Lubitz and how they said he was a very normal man with a bright future ahead of him.

 The article starts off by saying, “Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz's voice isn't heard in a recording of the final moments of Germanwing’s Flight 9525.” It goes right into detail about what was heard on the plane. Unlike the other articles there was a new fact about how Lubitz deliberately locked out the plane’s captain before setting the plane on it’s crash course. 

Unlike the others, the article is focused around how the police are searching Lubitz apartment to try and find answers as to why he would do this. The article also includes a lot more background on Lubitz and discusses how he had a love for flying since a very young age. Pilots at the gliding club that Lubitz was a member of since a very young age said the man they knew would have never deliberately crashed a plane. “(He was) a very normal young person, full of energy," Klaus Radke said. "What can I say? He had a bright future. He made his hobby into his job. What more can you hope to achieve?" Another pilot said he was a lot of fun even though he was a bit quiet at times.

The articles are all very different. The first and second one are very focused on what happened and the details while the third is mainly focused on Lubitz background and why this could have happened. It seems like many people from his hometown don’t believe that this was deliberate because they don’t feel as though he would ever do such a thing. This could be considered bias simply because these are people that know him personally and don’t want to believe that very possible harsh reality.

[lil5223]

Talk Radio

On my drive to school on February 25th I turned on 12.10 and listened for about 20 minutes. The host Chris Stigall, and somebody else who's name I missed were discussing Netflix and the FCC. They talked about how Comcast is slowing down the internet and Neflix and basically taking over it. He also talked about how Comcast and Time Warner are merging and taking over all smaller companies, such as Netflix. He then went on to talk about how the government protects Netflix and how this is supposed to be the generation that is all about Freedom yet we are allowing the government to regulate the internet without saying a word or fighting against it and how we should be very concerned about it. The government is going to be in our business because nobody is doing anything to stop it, instead we are just allowing them to do it without a fight.

My next listen was on March 4th. The host was talking to Senator Toomey who talked about how he opposes a government shutdown and how its a blunt weapon. He told Stigall its probably a fact that using government funding as a tool to limit the executive doesn't work well when its all or nothing. He said if its a binary choice, shut the government down entirely or run the government entirely and that the American public probably doesn't  want to see us employ that weapon except in extraordinary circumstances. He thinks the executive action was done outside the law and that he feels that it's a better route for Congress to go instead of shut down. He would like the house to pass a funding bill that would fund the government from December 11th and add an explicit provision that says no funding what so ever can be used in implement. He thinks this would fund the government and forbid the president from implementing the rule since it's not consistent with the law which would then send it over to the senate.

I listened again today on March 5th at about 11:13 am. Chris Stigall talked a lot about the snow that we are currently having. He then got into talking about how he talked to Pat Toomey yesturday, which I discussed above. He talked about how they talked a lot about the President, immigration, and the government. He then talked to Bob Casey, who is the other Senator of Pennsylvania. He talked about how parents are allowing their children to walk home from school alone and how they are going to be in big trouble for it now. He talked about how privacy,surveillance state,  and sweeping of data are things that young people are opposed to, especially after just getting their official freedom after having to deal with parents watching over them. He talked about how there is a seperation of powers whether it's health care, immigration, ect.

I  listened to these stations for about 15-20 minutes each.

[lil5223]

Body Image

Media has a serious influence on body image and it makes people feel pressures to look a certainway. The media tells people that their value is based on how they look on the outside. Society tells people that they need to be thin or in shape in order to be loved, accepted and successful in life. How people perceive themselves can become distorted which could lead them to engage in detrimental behaviors when they feel they don’t measure up to the impossible goal that is set in front of them. These risky behaviors could be anything from eating disorders, cutting, drug and alcohol abuse, bullying, and even sexual addictions.

It’s been proven in studies that media is a huge contributor to negative impact on self image. There are different TV shows, movies, magazines, and websites on the internet that bombard teens with images about how their bodies should look. The big issue is that these expectations are unrealistic. All of these images are photo shopped and air-brushed versions of models. Sadly, teens believe the lies and begin to take unhealthy measures in order to try to try and make them selves look the way the media tells them they should look.

All of the ads shown in Killing Us Softly were terrible and very degrading to women. I was disgusted to see how the media make woman look especially compared to men. I don’t understand why that is allowed or socially acceptable at all but it really needs to stop.

The media personally doesn’t affect my identity because overall I am happy with who I am. I do see it affect a lot of people though and it’s sad to see. I have a friend who constantly says she is fat, even though she weights around 110 pounds. I hate to see that kind of thing because it just reminds me of how much media is influencing people to want to be thinner. The media should help people be happy with who they are and what they look like rather than make people feel like they are not good enough. If there are going to be ads that make people feel that they need to be skinnier they should make them appropriate and motivational. Degrading woman and making people feel like they are ugly or fat is just wrong. Having  more positive and appropriate advertisements would make people a lot happier and healthier. I don’t really notice this issue affecting anyone around me on campus but I’m sure like anywhere else that it does. People are affected by this allover and it’s very sad.

[lil5223]

Newspaper Story that stood out to me

The story that I found interesting was called “The only baby book you’ll ever need.” This story talks about all different insights from a range of culture types, along with primate studies, and history. This stood out to me because I found it to be an interesting approach on teaching American parents, or people in general, that children are raised in all different ways, and turn out just fine. For example, this story talks about how children in Fiji are not allowed to address adults or make eye contact with them. In Gapun, children are encourages to hit dogs and chickens, and to raise knives at their siblings. The main message that this story is trying to give is that humans have a tremendous capacity for living inside their culture and accepting those arrangements as natural, and finding other ways of living weird, unnatural, and even wrong. This book doesn’t render judgment like many other parenting books do. It also helps teach people to value things that, in a cross-cultural perspective, might suddenly seem arbitrary. This story really made me think about all of these different considerations and really put things into perspective for me. What we do in our cultures may seem weird or crazy to people in other cultures because it is simply not their norm, and vise versa. I think this book is beneficial for parents, and people to read to really get a good understanding of that.

[lil5223]

Inspirational Books

 The first book that I thought of when I thought of an inspiring book was the “Life of Pi” which also now has a movie out. I had to read this my freshman year of high school. It’s about a boy named Pi Patel whose father owned a zoo in India. His father decides to sell the zoo and emigrate with his family to Canada. They board a ship called the Tsimtsum which is a Japanese freighter that transports animals from their zoo to North America. After a few days on the sea a terrible storm comes and sinks the shop. Pi manages to escape in a small life boat only to find out that the boat holds a hyena, an injured zebra and an orangutan. The hyena eventually kills the zebra and the orangutan. Pi then finds out that there is a tiger hiding under the boats tarp. The tiger emerges and kills the hyena. Pi goes through many events and gets to a point where he is to sick and blind to catch fish to feed himself. The tiger kills a Frenchman that attempts to kill Pi, saving him. Pi and the tiger are stuck on the sea for 207 days before they drift upon an island and the tiger disappears into the jungle without a glance back leaving Pi heartbroken. Overall this story makes you believe in possibilities of higher things in your own life and it was a very inspirational novel.

The next book I found inspirational that I read on my own was the entire Hunger Games Series. This was such a intense series of books. The main character, Katniss Everdeen portrays one of the strongest female characters I ever read about. She stands up for her own values and beliefs and has no fear when shes living in the middle of a horrific revolution. She takes her sisters place in competing in the Hunger Games without even a second of hesitation. The setting of the story takes place in a post-failed revolution America and it was interesting to see what could happen if things ever got to that point, even though the book/movie seemed very extreme.

Another inspirational story Is "The Fault in Our Stars" which recently came out in theaters. The story was inspired by a girl named Esther Earl who died days before her 16th birthday. The story in a short and less detailed form is about a girl named Hazel who has cancer and is very depressed. She meets a boy Augustus Waters in her cancer group and they end up getting very close. Augustus Waters is full of life and cancer free and helps bring her out of her depression. Hazel is obsessed with meeting the author of a book called “An Imperial Affliction” which is a story by Van Houten that has no ending. Hazel is dyeing to know the ending of the book and wants to plan a trip to his home in Amsterdam to try and get answers. Augustus uses his one “Make a Wish” wish on getting he and Hazel a trip to Amsterdam to track down Van Houten. They get there and are mildly disappointed with Van Houten since he is a rude drunk and refuses to give Hazel and Augustus any kind of answers. They are both very disappointed by decide to enjoy their trip anyway. Augustus confesses his love to Hazel and even though she tries to fight feelings to protect him from hurt when she dies, she can’t fight the feelings. The story takes a turn when Augustus tells Hazel that his cancer came back and it is spreading rapidly throughout his body.  He gets sicker and sicker with time and eventually becomes unable to walk. It eventually kills him leaving Hazel completely heartbroken. Hazel sees that Van Houten shows up at Augustus’s funeral and tries to talk to her. He tries to tell her that the reason he was so mean and didn’t want to discuss his novel was because it was about his daughter who died of cancer at the age of 8. Hazel refuses to listen to him and walks away but he leaves her with a note. The note was a eulogy that Augustus wrote about Hazel. The eulogy was filled with inspirational and beautiful words. It said “Getting hurt in this world is inevitable, but we do get to choose who we allow to hurt us, and that he his happy with his choice. He hopes she likes her choice too.”  The final words of the novel come from Hazel, who says she does.

The Great Gasby was a story I read in college. It’s a classic book about a man Jay Gasby’s  self-made success story. Gasby is a man who pursues and fulfills his dream. He was a nobody that came from obscure poverty to immense wealth. The story tells you that if you work hard enough, you can succeed.

 I would recommend reading any of these stories but the two that stand out the most to me are “The Life of Pi” and “The Fault in Our Stars.”

[lil5223]

Violence in the media

I have seen violence in the media that has effected me, simply because it just was to gruesome and violent. This video game that originally came out in 1997 called "Postal" is one of them. This video game was out for a while but eventually got banned for being so gruesome. This game had no plot other than to just go on a random murder rampage/killing spree and murdering a large amount of characters on each level by using weapons such as machine guns, Molotov cocktails, and more. Some of these victims being innocent bystanders, for example a marching band happily coming down the block. It's full of collateral damage and its just to much. It reminds me of a shooting rampage that could happen in our world. Its very graphic, even being such an old-school video game.  There's tons of blood all over and it doesn't seem necessary at all.

[lil5223]

One of the most influential stories I've heard in my entire life time was Walt Disney's success story. When you originally think of success it’s easy to think of Walt Disney, considering he is one of the world most successful men to ever live. He is responsible for creating more than 81 feature films and hundreds of different shows. He earned over 950 honors, including 48 Academy Awards. He founded the California Institute of the Arts. Most importantly he created Disney Land. These successes came from many different challenges- even failures. Walt's life was full of many difficult moments and from these moments he grew and reached the exponential success he is known for today.

Before success, Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for “lacking originality and having no creative ideas of his own.” At the age of 22, Walt experiences bankruptcy. Who would have thought he would go on to become one of the best known motion picture producers in the world. Beyond all Walt’s disappointment and learning came incredible success. As Walt would say, "Get a good idea, and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done, and done right."

What I mainly took from Walt's experience is that there may be struggles on to road to opportunity, you just have to learn from your mistakes and never give up on your dreams no matter how many issues you come across along the way. Every experience in life is a learning experience and you need to keep a positive outlook and take all that you can from it in order to reach success. Our success is defined by our persistence, courage, and hard efforts even in the most difficult of times.

[lil5223]

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