Klosterman & Glassner

Chuck Klosterman wrote an article called All I Know is What I Read in the Papers. This article started out by talking about media and newspapers and journalism. You can tell that Klosterman has a certain opinion about these things and ligtly inserts this into his article. I thought a quote that he stated about journalists was quite funny, "They have higher ethics and lower common sense." I thught it was interesting how he explained how reporters write the news and how many people distrust what they read. i can relate to this in many ways. Personally, I have had problems trusting articles as well. I think that journalists can sometimes twist the story from what it is in reality. But this also depends on the actual media form they are reporting too. I think Klosterman really argues from this though and udnertsantds that our generation is based on technology. He says in the end, "We are loosing the ability to understand anything that's even vaguely complex". This is such a strong statement.

In the article "Dubious Dangers on Roadways and Campuses: How Fears are Sold" by Barry Glassner, he opens by explaining fear and how it is evident this day in society. He quotes Alfred Hitchhock by saying, "There is no terror in the bang, only the anticipation of it," Glassner explains how this can be related to journalists in print media. They have an ancedote of foreshadowing that goes aong with their work. He uses the example of car accidents and the way they report them to explain journalistic views. Glassner is getting at the fact that media trys to scare society on differente things and establish fear on things that aren't that fearful or are unimportant. I thought this was an interesting idea. Glassner states,"The more talk there is about road rage, the more likely are newspaper reporters, police officers, and insurance agents to classify as examples of it incidents that they would have ignored altogether or catalogued differently in the past." The media always tries to twist events or stories that may not be as they seem. I think overall, we shouldn't ignore the news entirely just because we believe that these stories might be exaggerated, but we should just read it with some caution. Journalists might have a campaign of fear among the reader but we should not over analyze these aspects of the news.