Oh. So that's why people don't like us.

This week I had the opportunity to check out the Mormon Media Studies Symposium which I thought was pretty good. The session I went to was called "Image and Authenticity: What We Think of Ourselves" by Sterling Van Wagenen. He started off by giving some statistics yielded by a study of 2,000 randomly sampled Americans about what they think of Latter-day Saints. 44% of those sampled thought of Latter-day Saints as family oriented, and another 27% described them as determined. Those adjectives, however, were among the only ones that were positive. The others included cultish, controlling, secretive, weird, pushy, and of course, anti-gay. These descriptions hurt my feelings a little bit, but the point of the entire lecture was not to focus to much on what people think about us, but what we think of ourselves.

Van Wagensen mentioned that most LDS people have a sort of inferiority complex because we tend to be looked at so negatively by outsiders. We almost yearn for a positive representation of Mormons in professional sports or in the entertainment world to try to "normalize" what people think about us. While there is nothing wrong with having pride in your religion and wanting to see people like you succeed, we should not do so as a result of feeling bad about who we are. We need not care so much that people see us in a negative light, if those people see us that way because of what we believe in. Our values are clearly not worth hiding or putting on the back burner for anyone else.

While I don't know why people think I'm pushy or controlling, I' okay with being looked at as weird or secretive since I know its for a reason. And its about me and no one else.

The Fourth Estate...Keeping an Eye on the Other Three

Last class we talked all about the role of journalists as watchdogs for the government and any other group that may be trying to take advantage of American citizens. In the article, Watchdog Culture: Why You Need it, How You Can Build it (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=34&aid=82985), author Butch Ward quotes Orlando Sentinel Editor Charlotte Hall who said the following, "Watchdog journalism is a state of mind for the whole newspaper: Journalism that gives power to people." I absolutely love this quote, because its so true. The government cannot do deceive the American people without having to look over their own shoulders to make sure the press doesn't get wind of it. And that's the way it should be. Government shouldn't try to deceive us anyway. The role of watchdog journalism in our culture gives individual citizens the power over them and everyone else.

Something that I feel goes hand in hand with watchdog journalism is the idea of credibility. Newspapers and journalists must do their best to stay credible so that people will continue to trust them with this huge responsibility. This goes not only for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribunes, but also the small town newspapers who have the same responsibility on lower levels. Clearly the Daily Herald is not going to uncover the next Watergate Scandal or  print the next Pentagon Papers, but they still have a responsibility to keep their local leaders in check. Every journalists has this responsibility, and I think its important that they don't forget that.

Independence. That other thing journalists have to worry about.

Last class was all about journalistic independence, and the aspect of it I found the most interesting is what I think of as the human nature aspect. It is harder for journalists to separate themselves from their stories when they involve human suffering or have direct correlation to their own lives. For example, many journalists found it hard to cover the September 11th terrorist attacks. I found an example of this in an article called Found in the Flood by Eric Alterman (http://www.thenation.com/article/found-flood) where many stories about the tragedy were told through the lens of almost government hatred. It was difficult for the journalist to be completely independent of what they were seeing because of the emotion it stirred in them. I could not even imagine what it would be like to watch that many people suffer to that extent. Furthermore, some journalists could not be independent of the racial aspect of the situation. From one viewpoint, they were covering what they were sent their to cover, and there were indeed a disproportionate number of Black people than Whites, and everyone there was poor. As journalists, however we are not supposed to let our emotion, or disdain to a slow moving government, shine through our story. Independence. Objectivity. This is truly a difficult situation to apply these concepts to, but they must become second nature for journalism to be effective.

None of the journalistic principles we have learned about seem like they will be very easily practiced, but in the context of human tragedy, I think independence may be one of the most difficult for me to deal with personally.