The Newseum & NPR

While I took a trip to D.C. earlier this month, my club and I had the privilege to tour NPR and go to the Newseum. This trip really allowed me to explore new avenues of journalism as well as learn more about the history of journalism and the impact it's had around the world.

NPR was one of the coolest experiences I've had the pleasure of doing. From being registered and security cleared, to keeping our phones in locked slips, to walking through the NPR Newsroom, it was a complete dream. Every aspect was so chique and cool and welcoming, yet so organized but mildly chaotic all at once. I had never been a big podcast person, but since my tour, i've found myself indulging in more podcasts.

The Newseum is such an iconic yet underrated museum. It's so underrated and unappreciated that they're closing it at the end of the year. While other museums are cool, I feel as though the Newseum has a true civic purpose for Americans; to promote journalism and the first amendment. This museum has it all, a really cool FBI section, equipped with the Unabomber's cabin, an internet tower from the top of one of the Twin Towers that miraculously survived 9/11 rather well, a moving photography gallery that highlights crucial moments in human history and captures the realness of situations (It's so powerful I was in tears looking at every single photograph and reading every single caption), and even a hands-on experience where you get to choose a prompt and script and become a news reporter for a minute, then watch yourself take on the camera. The emphasis on the first amendment and the freedoms we have as americans that other countries don't was incredible. I just think, as impressive yet dysfunctional as our US Postal System is, we should find it odd to keep a huge postal museum yet remove the one that discusses our liberties and shines light on the power of journalism through such a dark and unpredictable time.

Presentation Review

I thought everyone had really insightful and interesting topics. Just like with my own groups' topics, I was shocked to see how common and popular some of these things are without even being conscious of it. I think one of the most interesting things we learned about was Five Eyes.

Five Eyes grasped my attention because of its depth and oddity. The Five Eyes consist of 5 countries; the US, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. I think its ironic that these countries are very caucasian dominated, hence the term white privilege. The Five Eyes is an intellegence sharing pact. Starting back in the World War 2, it's grown beyond communications between the UK and US to a more in depth, freakier, privacy invading organization.

5 Eyes freaks me out because whats to stop these countries from leaking information or using information in the wrong way. The ramifications of this could be detrimental, and this means that each of our privacies could be shared with those around the world, whom most of us would consider other countries to have no business in each of our personal affairs.

                            

Ted Talk Review

Ted Talks are really something I value. I love how engaged and interesting the speakers are.
I really found this Tattoo guy to be rather peculiar yet intriguing. I've never thought as my print on the internet to be a tattoo, more like a sharpie marker mark on your hand; hard to get rid of, but possible if you try hard enough and have enough hand sanitizer and a tolerance for rubbing skin on skin. I also really enjoyed his relations to his tattoo theory to Greek mythology. 

Cathrine Crump's video grabbed my attention because of her topic. It's insane that surveillance equipment is so capable of tracking us and everything we do. It's a complete violation of privacy. Especially the license plate tracker, that piece of equipment has so much power. To be able to capture and store the data of every person, innocent or guilty, is insane. 

I also loved and found to be very ironic the one about phones and wiretapping. We've had huge US presidency scandals about wiretapping, yet here we are, wiretapping our own citizens and invading in privacy. It's wicked unethical and rather hypocritical. I was relieved to hear that companies have been working to combat this, such as apple with protection against wiretapping within texts from iphone to iphone, same with whatsapp.

We say the US is the home of the free, but technology is making it out to be more like the jail of the "free".  We should definitely work to evolve this issue and work towards better privacy rights.

Presentation and Confirmation Bias

I think the topics my group is covering are actually very eye opening. I feel as though we as a society all know about these things, but we don't know terms or the science behind it, or we experience these things but don't even realize it's a legitimate phenomenon. 

The topic I chose to cover for my groups presentation is Confirmation Bias. Confirmation Bias is a dangerously common thing, and countless people are guilty of acting in such a sense. Confirmation Bias is defined as the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. In english, this basically means that we tend to lean towards news and/or news sources that reinforce something that we already believe to be true. Along with this, we choose to ignore the news that goes against our views, perhaps by pinning it out to be fake news, when in reality, it most likely isn't. 

I actually have a PERFECT example. This week, I was accepted to be a student on Semester at Sea for the Spring 2020 semester. This voyage is my dream, and i'll literally be able to practice exactly what I want to do for a living, because I will be taking feature writing, which means i'll be able to write stories in countries about other cultures and people, and give them a spotlight in the world. While I am only seeing the absolute positives to this situation, and am only capable of finding good reviews and what not about SAS, no matter how hard I try to find some sort of negative. Yet, when my mom decided to research SAS, she immediately was capable of finding news about very story sea experiences and a few accidental deaths, most of which dating back to over 10 years ago. While I understand there are dangers about going abroad, something like this is not going to taint me from wanting to go, as I know how to handle myself abroad. Regardless, this is a prime example of confirmation bias. Because of how desperate I am to go on SAS, I'll always lean towards the positive news. But, because my mom is rather against it, she'll lean and search for articles and reinforce her statement that it's dangerous.