Fairly Unbalanced: The State of the Modern Mainstream News Media

The internet, if it can survive as a free and neutral venue for the exchange of ideas, will be the salvation of us all.  Imagine a time before the web, when the only sources of information were newspapers, radio newscasts, and more recently network news.  Now we can have direct reports from bloggers who were on the scene, or instantaneously discuss the discrepancies between different networks’ coverage of an event with people all over the world.  We can access news reports from foreign news agencies such as the BBC, and get an outsider’s prospective on American politics and news events.  Unfortunately all this progress has not worked to reduce bias, inaccuracy, and sensationalism on the part of American cable news, but has rather worked to increase it.  To maintain their dwindling audiences, the networks have had to cater to their ideological bases and play up controversies and scandals to grab ratings, rather than striving for objectivity and rational discourse.   I would like to take some time to expose the bias, journalistic laziness, and irresponsibility of two major news networks.

First, permit me to turn my wrath on Fox News.  I will admit that they are just as unprofessional, sensationalistic, and biased as any other large news company, but this story just grates me.  You can find it online at:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/07/wikipedia-purges-porn/

The long and the short of it is that Fox did a story where they discovered-shock and horror!-that there were sexually-explicit images and images depicting the naked human form on Wikipedia pages concerned with sexually-explicit topics and human anatomy.  Allow me to dissect some of that article:

“These images were and in some cases still are easily accessible to anyone, including school children, many of whom receive unfiltered access to Wiki projects in schools across the country.” (more…)

The Gifts of Moher: The West of Ireland

The west of Ireland has a lot in common with my senior years of both university and high school. I’m at the point in my life now where I’m right on the edge of my final days of college, where I have to dive into the vast sea of adulthood, and have to endure other painful nautical metaphors of “sink or swim,” finding the “plenty of fish in the sea,” and so on. My senior year at Alemany High School was a time when I dreamt and planned of a life beyond hot, sweaty afternoons spent in the San Fernando Valley to go to a place of higher learning and frat parties. Those periods of my life seem like their own mini microcosm, with its own language. “APs, loitering, 4.0 grade scale,” for my high school years and “RDS Building, GRE, EAP, and EngSoc” for my year at UCD. The only other people who fit into your mini-world are those who sympathize with your confusion, I suppose. Both years were marked by a culture focused around leaving for the next thing. Everyone is right on the edge, collectively holding their breath before they go to the great unknown. And that’s what I did when I reached the Cliffs of Moher, I held my breath.

Hundreds of tourists pile into buses to trek the narrow roads threaded through the rolling green hills of Count Clare. They’re going to something great, so they’ve been told. They don’t know what is so great about some cliffs, yet they have their Canon A1s ready to snap at the first sheep that looks their way. I didn’t know what to think. Lonely Planet and Frommers just told me to go there, because that’s what you do in Ireland. I had put it off long enough. I dragged my Irish boyfriend, who had put it off even longer, to the west of Ireland. He knew it was something he had to see, but like me, didn’t know what to expect from it.

It’s quite staggering to see what 702 feet looks like above sea level. And to have the entire Atlantic Ocean, stretched out in front of you, waiting to be be sucked in by your digital camera— well, you almost feel sheepish (that comparison was intended, considering the west of Ireland appears to have more sheep than people) taking a picture because it is so imposing, and seems a bit pointless to try and capture. There were only three colors that view: the green of the rolling hills and the mossy cliffs, the blue backdrop of the ocean, and the grey of the castle perched on top of one of the cliffs. My eyes needed more time to adjust, my jaw needed to be picked up from the floor. (more…)

“You’ve got an accent on you!”

Oh Australia! My adventures continue daily here.  Yes, it is true that a wallaby tried to climb into my car in hot pursuit of the delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich I was eating.  I may or may not have danced onstage with LMFAO when they came to Melbourne last week.  I have also successfully driven on the left hand side of the road and gone rock climbing in in the heavens of Tasmania.  These moments, among many others, are what have made my time in Australia adventurous and amazing so far.

All that isn’t really what I wanted to talk about, though.  I wanted to talk about an every day “adventure” (if you will) that I have in this great multicultural nation, which in many respects is very much like the one that I have come from.  Much the way it is in the Great Ol U.S. of A., there are people of all races, from every place imaginable here.  On the surface, I blend in here as well as I do at home.  I go happily about my day, walking down the street looking like just another part of the multicultural melting pot that surrounds me.  No one pays me any mind or stares at me or notices anything different about me.  I appear, on the surface, as any Aussie would.

The facade ends the second I open my mouth.  Suddenly, the cat is out of the bag.  A look of dawning comprehension tends to cross the face of whoever I have just spoken to.  My normalcy disappears, and I instantly, with no chance to hide it, am recognizable as a foreigner.  Yep, my accent is a dead giveaway every damn time! If I’m lucky, I will get only about 6 or 7 consecutive questions and then some comments (“Are you doing exchange? How long are you here for? Why did you decide to come to Melbourne? Where in California are you from? I love California! Are you at Uni Melbourne? Do you like Australia? Your accent is great!”) Mostly, people are friendly, curious, and genuinely interested in what I am doing in their country.  They want to know how I am finding it, and are often quite anxious to help me have a good time. (more…)

Adventures to Norway (part 1)

I had three weeks off for this past Spring Break but Mexico was just a little too far away. Fortunately I had an alternative, and headed to Norway to stay with my Norwegian boyfriend, Eivind, for two weeks. Eivind and I have been dating for a year and a half now, long distance mostly, so I was excited to be off to spend some quality time with my Norwegian.

Eivind’s family home is in a small town called Hamar, about an hour outside of Oslo. We spent the first few days of the week in relative lazy bliss. We experimented with baking bread, which I highly recommend- It is very very easy, quick, and heck it’s cool to eat your own homemade bread!

For the second half of the week we embarked on a truly Norwegian traditional trip- we met up with Eivind’s parents and family friends at their cabin in the Norwegian wilderness. It was a pretty amazing experience. We spent the first day being lazy again, lounging, drinking a delicious soda called Solo, and cuddling with the family cat, who they bring along. On the second day we strapped some skis on and hit the cross country trails. I was eager to prove myself as a “potential Norwegian” to his family. (more…)

Oh its my shillelagh you’re laughing at?

This is the first of what I hope many, many captivating blogs will be published here on the Daily Nexog. I’m currently writing to you from Dublin, Ireland. For me, this is not just a travel-blog. I set off with three ships, La Nina, La Pinta, and La Santa Maria, in search of a continent that millions of people have already discovered. I hoped to trade and make friends with the locals to get their spices. And I hope to pass on my findings to you!

Ah yes, the Land of Eire, the Big Green, The Land of Rain and Bog. All miserable nicknames aside, I’ve been having the absolute best time of my young life living here for the past seven months. I only hope that more Santa Barbarians decide to step out of their sun-shiny comfort zone and take a chance on this place.

I came to Ireland like all Americans with fair skin-coloring and a valid passport: to get in touch with my roots, to live where my ancestors lived, to experience idyllic Ireland, and so on and so forth. Like almost all Americans, I can claim some uncle on my mother’s side twice removed to have lived somewhere in County Clare or something, so Ireland was the only place in the world I could see myself living abroad. On a more serious note, my mom lived in Ireland 30 years ago when she was a young-one like I was, and I was eager to share in her experience. (more…)

On Healthcare Reform and Tort Reform

Author’s Note:  I’d have commented on this all much sooner, but computer issues and other personal matters have delayed my completion of this entry.

It’s been quite an eventful couple of weeks in the world of politics. President Obama signed into law the healthcare bill which the House had passed the prior weekend, and that Thursday the Congress approved the “fixed” version of the bill which removed the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback”- extra $100 million in Medicaid funds for Nebraska-but kept other special deals for other states.  Twelve states are already set to challenge the bill’s constitutionality.

Now, I’m not going to attempt a point-by-point dissection of the bill, nor am I going to address its many flaws.  For an article which does a good job of that, see “20 Way ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms” by David Hogberg.  The latest Forbes also has a good article on all the taxes that Obama and the Democratic Congress have enacted, or will enact in the future, and I recommend that everyone read it, lest they be fooled by the oft-used talking point, “But Obama has actually cut taxes for most Americans!” Rather, I will simply go through what I think would have been better solutions and address the issue of Tort Reform, which has so often been brought up as a possible fix (or part of one) for the Health Care issue.  (more…)

Interview with Rebelution in Lyon

“Yeah, that’s definitely lamb…” I told Rory and Wesley as we all took bites into Marley’s mystery meat samosas – trying to end the “what the hell is that?” debate.

I don’t know about you, but I never imagined in a million years that that was how I’d be meeting the boys of Isla Vista’s own Rebelution for the first time. But I also never imagined in another million years (if you’re keeping count, that’s two million years of never imagining) that I’d be meeting them for the first time in Lyon, France – where I’ve been studying abroad since August. What were the odds, right?

In the case that last weekend’s DP-Topia has caused you some form of Natty Light-induced short-term memory loss and you can’t quite figure out why the name “Rebelution” sounds so familiar – I’ll try to refresh your memory in one sentence or less (well not really “less,” unless I write the following sentence without verbs): Rebelution is the “feel good,” roots reggae prodigy that got their start in our very own Isla Vista. Ringing any bells? I hope so, or else the rest of this article and subsequent interview isn’t going to make much sense. (more…)

Discovering What the Mayan Calendar Reads

Usually when you find these study abroad type of editorials in the Nexus, you can kinda call out what people will talk about. They go to a trendy European city, they lecture you about the world-class food that they have there, count you a short tale about the ‘exciting’ nightlife, and in the end, after comparing the place to IV, they go on to say that there is nothing like studying abroad because of the surprises it brings. I’m Chris, and I’m here studying abroad in Mexico, a country everyone including my own mother (who grew up there) warned me about coming to. I’ll try not to bore you with the same sequence of topics in my piece here. But of course, I do agree with them in one aspect: that there is nothing like studying abroad.  Mainly when you get the chance to enter places few have seen, like I have with living in a Mayan home amidst hundreds of small indigenous communities. How did this happen? Well, I guess you can say it’s like one of those surprises we students abroad often state.

Before I even left for this muddled but gorgeous neighboring country the US has, there was an anxious family back home and the expressions on some people’s faces saying: “Why the fuck are you going there?” that had me a little bit fretful about coming here. It was a whirlpool of mixed feelings I had and, reasonably, the worries stem from the current Drug War that has gotten bloodier by the month and is spreading across ‘la republica’. You can even argue that it’s spread into the hands of the US as well, as just not too long ago three US embassy workers were assassinated. There was that topic, and there was also the one about swine flu. This was constantly brought up every time I answered the question of where I was going to studying abroad. I always found the theme of swine flu to be a bit funny and ironic since the chances of getting it in IV were perhaps the same as they are here (If you would recall the numerous cases last summer). Up until this day, almost exactly 3 months since I arrived here, still no swine flu and fortunately, I haven’t run into any problems with the drug cartels. So, what exactly has this choice brought me to? (more…)

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