Category Archives: Media

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence | InfoWorld | News | 2007-03-06 | By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

blogging, Media

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

From InfoWorld, an article describing the French government’s attempt to reign in citizen journalists by making it an offense for anyone to film and distribute acts of violence unless they are sanctioned journalists. So, they are trying to unblur the very blurry lines between bloggers and journalists. I think along with that law, they should prohibit these sanctioned journalists from blogging. It might be too confusing for their citizens to distinguish between the real and the possibly not-real. That’s assuming, of course, that the journalists are always reporting what’s real.

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Reading, like a brick, forms strong foundation – USATODAY.com

Education, Media

Reading, like a brick, forms strong foundation – USATODAY.com

I’m posting this because it relates to some research I’ve been reading that says that teachers are either ignored in the media or only presented in negative ways. I was reminded of that as I read this really nice feature about a 50-something teacher who makes learning fun even when it is hard. She incorporates games (OK, not video but vocabulary) and includes an art project as part of the standard research project. Nice article!

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Well, It Turns Out That Lonelygirl Really Wasn’t – New York Times

Media, Media Literacy, Movies, Postmodernism

Well, It Turns Out That Lonelygirl Really Wasn’t – New York Times
“They were like the new Marshall McLuhan.”

I missed this one…don’t spend enough time at YouTube, I guess. Anyway, it turns out that the teen who has been videocasting from her laptop is actually a 20-something actress who is videocasting from someone else’s laptop.  The interesting piece of this from a media literacy standpoint is that the audience suspected all along that this wasn’t “real” yet were fascinated by the story as well as the mystery of who she really was.  There is a fine line between fiction and reality these days, isn’t there?

Disney Does 911

Media, Movies

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I haven’t seen any of the 9/11-related movies but this one is already generating controversy and is another perfect text to study in a media literacy class. ABC’s movie is a “fictionalized” account of history before 9/11 and evidently seems biased against the Clinton administration. Where’s the line between news and entertainment? Can you create fiction out of history when the main players are still alive and have any reason to stand up and say, “That’s not how it happened?” So, I wonder if this makes people think twice about all historical fiction, especially who is telling the story? Maybe it should even make them think about historical non-fiction 😉

NB: After I posted this, I read an article on defining documentary films by Dirk Eitzen that addresses the very issues at play here.  My notes on the article can be found at the wiki.