Boston Marathon Bombing - New York Post Trigger Race-Sensitivity

Concepts: journalism ethics; media law 

Based on the news reported in the New York Post about two teenagers that are being suspected as responsible men for the bombs incident in Boston Marathon recently, was a “big shame” for the publishing industry for featuring deceptive information to the public. With the fact that the company has poor evident and information regarding the attack, yet they featured a whole page size picture of these two innocent fellows indicating them as the ‘target’ with a bold font of “Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon” as the headline. The reason behind it, only because both of the ‘suspects’ has middle-eastern physical looks with a backpack. 

New York Post Editor, Col Allan

In addition, the worst part, the tabloid Post Editor, Col Allan do not even ask for apologize yet still defending the tabloid statement even though it was badly-criticized. Clearly, the publishing company is unethical for being insensitive towards other races. In fact, not only New York Post alone as other tabloids such as CNN and Fox News had the same ideology. According to Jake Lynch, who learns that it is essential for the journalist to consider the importance of term ‘ethic of responsibility’ (Michell, L 2009). Even in my own opinion as a Muslim adherent, the tabloid’s editors is being prejudice or shall I say racist, by notion that all Muslims are terrorists after the 9^th September’s tragedy, which he they literally do not care which Muslim or "Muslim-looking" person they happen to be targeting on that particular day. Besides, it is. This issue is not only putting pressure and cause trauma to the two men when they are labeled as terrorists, but also gives a bad impression towards Muslim communities. Besides, as the authorize medium to deliver a news, New York Post should report about ‘the incident fact’ instead of being unethical featuring false information to the public (Petros, I 2011). This thought are also supported by Himelboim & Limor (2008) who argues that newspaper have its reliability, credibility, truthfulness, accuracy, fairness, impartially and public accountability for the readers.

References

Himelboim, I & Limor, Y 2008, ‘Media Perception of Freedom of the Press: A Comparative International Analysis of 242 Codes of Ethics’, Journalism [Journal], vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 235-265.

Iosifidis, Petros 2011, Global Media and Communication Policy, e-book, accessed 13 June 2013, <http://unisa.eblib.com.au.ezlibproxy1.unisa.edu.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=785017>.

Lincoln M (2009), Hermeneutical dimensions of a media ethic, Communication: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, 35:2, 240-250

Screen vs. Print Document Design

                                    

There are several differences in terms of design between screen document and print document. Based on the example attached, the first three graphic is represent screen document while the rest are to represent the print document. To discuss the point that need to be consider in both document, the reading material wrote by Ambrose, G. & Haris, P. (2005) the basic structure of a layout in a book are used as a guide.

First, Margin- In presentation slide, there is no precise margins to arrange the text. Unlike for the printed document; textbook, requires margins in order to arrange the words so that the readers are able to identify the sequence of the text. Thus, margin in textbook act as a guide for readers to scheme the reading. Next, the font style,  size and color-  In presentation slide, users are free to use any font, style, and size as long as the words are able to be read, clear and understandable by the audience. While, in textbook used formal font, which is constant in the use of font size, style and color. This is because; student used textbook as a reference, while presentation is used to get the idea of the presentation. Besides that, a Presentation slide does not necessarily apply the concept of empty space. In textbook, empty space is necessary in order to make the text easy to read by segmenting the words into paragraph. Hence, it is important to apply proper concept so that the users of both documents are able to receive the information clearly.  

Reference:

Ambrose, G. & Haris, P. (2005) . Basic Design 02: Layout. 2nd ed. USA: AVA Publishing SA

                               
                                 

                                 

Alternate Media and Ecosystem

            Living in a century where Information and communication technology grows with the availability of various Internet-based applications, helps peoples in many ways.  Perhaps, some peoples  are unconscious how the new media has actually turns up the social's lifestyle. Being familiar with sort of new medias; YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and online newspaper has brought people apart from traditional media (newspaper, journalism and books) regardless in terms of communication or reading documents . Levinson (2009) refers to “new-new media" in which he explains that more new of new media that show a difference from the traditional media. He also added, with a new bunch of social medias nowadays, even e-mail are now falls under 'classic media'.

(Source : http://www.teknomasi.com/2011/03/pengalaman-membaca-harian-metro-edisi_31.html)

In context of the information contents, both new media and traditional media are more or less similar except the way people interact with the medium of the information. For instance, a newspaper published on a particular day  contains the same information as in new media. The information via new media however are a step ahead compare to the traditional media, as the efficiency in conveying information to readers takes only few seconds. In addition, unlike traditional newspaper, online-newspaper allows reader to gives feedback and comment to certain issues reported. Hereby, online-newspaper allows two-way communication between the publisher and the readers.

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/fox-news-pulls-facebook-post-death-threats-aimed-215422479.html)

Moreover, a social network; Twitter and Facebook, for instance has change the lifestyle of celebrity in which he/she able to update their daily activity in real time. To the most celebrities, social network may regard as a  'essential need' as to build closer interaction with their fans. Besides, social network also act as a voice of communities in a way to express the thought and reaction of towards particular issue. Over time, social media also change the pattern of how people voice out their concern. 

In an effort to save environment and ecosystem, the new media saves millions of paper as all the information and content of publication are available online. Simon (1973) supported the idea in which he argues that having alternative like technology can help to protect the environment. By reducing the use of papers, leading significant decline in logging activity, which helps to preserves the ecosystem.

(Source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8020253/Apple-iPad-used-most-for-web-email-and-newspapers-owners-say.html)

References:

Levinson, S. (2009). The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32(5)

Simon, H.A. 1973, "Technology and Environment", Management Science (pre-1986), vol. 19, no. 10, pp. 1110.