The Things We Think and Do Not Say

My fourth and final graded blog post of the class involved selecting how a type of person is portrayed in the media. For my analysis, I chose a 1996 film directed by Cameron Crowe called “Jerry Maguire.” In my analysis I refer to scenes and concepts spread out over the entire film. 

It should be mentioned that I have positioned my critique as my own interpretation of the meanings that are produced by the text. I am qualifying my analysis in the way Bonnie Dow (1996) qualified her arguments in the book “Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement Since 1970.”

Let me point out that I am not asserting that my view is the only way to interpret the text or even the best way to interpret it. I am not making a claim about how others will interpret the text, but I am inviting you to reconsider your own views of the text in light of my arguments about it.

In my opinion, the film “Jerry Maguire” is a story that critiques materialism at the expense of personal relationships. The protagonist, super-sports agent Jerry Maguire, critiques this concept of materialism by flushing out a perceived sense of dishonesty in sports management and ultimately proves that the pursuit of financial success should never come before the value of personal relationships.

Who would of thought some bad pizza would help Jerry grow a conscious? (Photo courtesy of dvd.net).

The way Jerry Maguire critiques materialism at the expense of personal relationships is by realizing and proving a perceived sense of dishonesty in the sports management business. One night Jerry has two pieces of bad pizza, goes to bed and “grows a conscious.” From that point on Jerry is haunted with guilt and realizes a change in him. 

Jerry writes a mission statement titled “The Things We Think and Do Not Say,” a 45 page memo given to all the members of his sports agency that points out the wrong path sports agents are heading. “Let us start a revolution. I am prepared to die for something. I am prepared to live for our cause. The cause is caring about each other. The secret to this job is personal relationships.” Here, Jerry points out the way in which athletes are becoming simple numbers among their agents and have no personal value or worth.

These examples are relevant today because of the way sports agencies are becoming large conglomerates where money and success become the focus over the athlete’s personal needs and relationships. This simple fact leads to the idea of dishonesty and a lack of integrity among sports agencies to win over each other’s clients.

One might argue that money has always been the focus in sports, so why change now? The fact that money has become such a huge factor in professional sports today and teams have to overpay for supersize athletes of conglomerate agencies such as that of Scott Boras is the reason for a sense of negativity and lack of integrity in the sporting world.

Ultimately, Jerry proves that the pursuit of financial success should never come before personal relationships. He shows this in the way he hangs onto his one and only client, Rod Tidwell. Through high and low times, it is evident that by the end of the film Jerry’s relationship with Tidwell shifts from strictly business to a close, personal friendship. 

The close relationship between this agent and athlete is relevant to my argument because it goes to show that reaching out to people in life is the key to both professional and personal success. Can you still be successful without the personal relationships? Maybe, but you will never earn personal value and integrity with the people around you. You simply become a number.

Certainly, the film “Jerry Maguire” is a story that epitomizes the key to personal and professional success. In the end, this is the story of a super-sport agent who eats some pizza, grows a conscious, and questions the dangerous path that professional sports are heading down today.

Jerry, left, and his client Rod represent the belief that reaching out to people is the key to professional and personal success. (Photo courtesy of dreamagic.com).

 

References:

Dow, B (1996). Prime-time feminism: Television, media culture, and the women’s movement since 1970. Philadelphia: University Press.

Lawrence, Mark (Producer), & Crowe, Cameron (Director). (1996). Jerry Maguire [Motion Picture]. United States: TriStar Pictures.

Copyrights: How long is too long?

My assignment for the week was take a stand on the length for how long a copyright lasts and argue my position. The argument of a copyright has been an issue that involves many ambiguous elements. This is because a copyright can be used in many different ways. Certainly, I believe that that the length of a copyright of a lifetime plus 72 years is too long and allows corporate conglomerates to pressure small time first-users to have an advantage in the market.

First, lets look at the definition of a copyright. It is the exclusive legal right given to the creator of an original work to control its distribution for a length of time, after which the work becomes part of the public domain. This seems like a reasonable and fair definition, but other issues must be considered such as copyrights of items that are not tangible or materialistic.

Published works and movies are easy to follow in the copyright, but how are you supposed to monitor the other millions of ideas and works that are passed around. What I am saying is that not all first-time marketers come up with their own original ideas, but often use the ideas of others that are not tangible.

The fact that a copyright lasts for 72 years initially seems somewhat reasonable in the fact that the producer of the work is benefiting from his or her copyright while they are alive, but what about when they pass away? What happens to the copyright and how does one benefit from it after they are gone?

This extra long copyright seems to give mass media conglomerates the advantage because it gives them the advantage to own both tangible and un-tangible works that would other wise be used by individuals and members of society. I just don’t see it as fair for people who simply want to use the “Happy Birthday” song in a video or work, but have to pay thousands of dollars to the first-time marketer before they do so. 

There are a few elements of copyright infringement that dance around the idea of fair use. These include the purpose and character of the use, the nature of copyrighted work, amount of the portion of work used, and the effect of use upon the potential market for copyrighted work. I believe these ideas should be considered when deciding what is fair and what isn’t in the copyright.

Certainly, this issue of a copyright is a very tough and ambiguous task to undertake. I believe that the government needs to take another look at the length of a copyright and more acts and laws that protect the individual first-time user. Examining issues such as the copyright allows us to further look into the world of media and how it works.

Sensationalism in Media

For this week’s assignment, my class was told to find a science or health article within a mainstream online newspaper and examine it. I chose an article from the USA Today titled, “Census of world’s sea life tallies up tentacles of surprises,” by Dan Vergano. The science article gives an overview of an ongoing marine project in which scientists plan to have complete a census of the marine biology population by 2010. Although the story shows flashes of sensationalism from the start, it provides valid facts and sources that left me satisfied with information.

In his opening sentence, Dan Vergano tries to hook the reader by making an exiting and colorful image. Referring to a shark playground and a mountain of sea stars, the author attempts to drag in any marine-biology lover by capitalizing on the mysterious and mind-blowing vastness of the ocean. It is evident here that Vergano draws the reader in by using colorful images rather than basic facts.

After the opening paragraph, Vergano does start to get down to the facts. He writes that over 2,000 scientists from over 80 countries are working together to provide a complete census of marine life population by the year 2010. This sentence is the basic message of Vergano’s article: that something big is happening in marine biology.

Vergano goes onto to use a quote from a senior project scientist who claims that the operation of the census is entering its final stretch and believes the world will have a very good census by the year 2010. This a very credible source because of the fact that its coming from one of the top researchers of the census operation. Vergano goes on to mention that since the year 2000, scientists have already discovered 5,300 new species.

After listing a few other specific findings, the author ends with a quote from another project scientist who believes we are in the second Golden Age of marine biology and compares today’s scientific efforts to those of Charles Darwin. While this source may be overdramatizing the operation by comparing it to the scientific breakthroughs of Darwin, I believe Vergano provides valid facts that suggest this may be true.

It is relevant to analyze and interpret articles such as this one because it has been a growing concern in the media that mainstream news sources such as USA Today use sensationalism to attract viewers and bring in more revenue. Media outlets need to stray away from the story telling role and move more into the custodian effect role because the latter allows people to make informed decisions about their personal health and public policy.

It is also crucial to realize that scientists have ambivalent attitudes about sensationalized media coverage. They want to draw interest and spark funding for their research, but at the same time they do not want to misinform their audiences. This contradictory attitude can be seen in the article above because it provides basic facts for the reader but also overdramatizes the scientist’s research a bit by comparing it to the findings of Darwin.

All in all, I believe the story I read about the marine life census provides both a custodian of fact role as well as a story telling role. In the end it left me with valid facts about the census and its possible impact on the world. After analyzing this story by Dan Vergano, I can spot sensationalism in an article. Certainly, the custodian of fact role should be increased in mainstream media by hiring more experts and making more time to provide factual stories that inform people.

 

Images such as this one have been portrayed in many mainstream media to grab the reader and draw in more revenue. (Photo courtesy of hoax-slayer.com)

Exploring an Online Branded Community

My assignment for the week was to explore an online branded community and describe my opinions about it. I chose Nike.com. Nike is a dominant product company of the sports industry and I thought it would be interesting to look into their online marketing. When first logging onto the site, there is an pull down list giving me the option to choose which continent’s website to go to. This shows just how far Nike’s reach is beyond just North America.

The site is composed of many videos that have a sort of integrated touch to them. The first video I watched was called “Fate” and included NFL players LaDanian Tomlinson and Troy Palamalu. The video showed their love and talent for football starting at a young age and the eventual collision on the football field between these two all-stars.

The second video I watched was a piece showing the U.S. soccer team and how they are out the prove everybody wrong. The text in the video was very fast and exiting with some great soccer highlights from the team. These ads that I watched were definitely engaging and the ads are successful in motivating or bringing out the passions of a fan regarding sport.

Nike, like most sports marketing companies, uses implicit advertising rather than explicit. That is, their ads do not directly sell their product, but they get the consumer to think about the product by implying a certain moment of a sports experience. The funny thing I notice about Nike is that they do not talk about their brand’s positive attributes in their ads. Instead, they use star athletes and put them in a situation that shows they “leave nothing”. 

Although watching these ads do not persuade me to immediately jump in the car and go buy some sneakers, they do somehow bring out a passion in the consumer that implicitly makes them think about Nike’s product. After exploring Nike’s website, it is easy to associate its products with the like-ability of today’s star professional athletes.

 

This simple logo has been grained into sport culture throughout the world by using implicit advertising. (Image courtesy of teamsugar.com)

Are Violent Video Games to Blame?

My assignment for the week was to locate three academic journal articles about a mass medium that could send undesirable messages. After reading three articles I was able to come to a conclusion about video game violence and its effect on today’s society.

Based on the secondary research I conducted, I believe video games do not increase violence in society. Although many believe violent games like Grand Theft Auto provide a negative message to its users, I think this belief is a simple card stacking theory of ethical reasoning, or a paradigm, that needs to be reexamined.

In the first academic article I read, Stephen Marche  gives a general background of video game violence and how purification through violence has become one of America’s central political mythologies. Marche explains how Grand Theft Auto is a form of violence without constraint and it is a way of “potus et exlex”–to lose yourself and get outside of the law. This article gave me a general reason of how people may see violent games as negative, but it left me asking the question: why do people think this way?

In the second article I read, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson take the stand on telling parents to relax because the fears of harmful effects of video games are no different than “uproars about dime novels, gangster films, and comics” (Kutner & Olson). I agree with this claim because I believe that all forms of violence portrayed on television and in books are just as negative as violent video games. 

The last piece I read shows that violent video games are not the problem in our society. Bill Blake calls for a more socially aware form of ethical reasoning capable of framing our critical responses to media content. Blake reasons that there is a pattern of human contempt and social hostility that is growing deep roots in our culture. In regard to Grand Theft Auto, he asks the reader to be honest: “would you actually go out and shoot a stripper or fire a rocket launcher if the chance permitted itself?” (Blake). 

In Blake’s article, he is questioning today’s societal paradigm, or a set of boundaries, that portrays the powerful media theory of card stacking. This theory consists of the “selection and use of facts or falsehoods, illustrations or distractions, and logical or illogical statements in order to give the best or worst possible case for an idea, program, person, or product” (Lee and Lee, 1939, p. 95). Blake questions the political falsehoods of this paradigm, and calls for ethical criticism of how we view violence portrayed through the media.

After reading these three articles, especially Blake’s, I have come to the conclusion that violent video games do not have as big of a negative impact on society as we may think. Instead, we need to develop a new paradigm to formulate how we really view violence in the media. The best way to discover whether media have harmful effects on society is through research. The findings about video game violence I examined are relevant to Grand Theft Auto because it is the most criticized mass medium of portrayed violence.

If you still believe violent video games have the most negative impact on society, ask yourself this: what about the violent movies, what about bloody images and the media coverage of the conflict in Iraq, and even the violence and negativity that has spilled over into professional sports? These are all areas that need to be examined when finding where video games fit into the larger picture. Certainly, I believe violent video games do not have a big impact on society. By examining this issue, we question the many paradigms that we live our lives by and gain a more in-depth perspective of the mass media.

 

Grand Theft Auto has been at the center of video game controversy since its creation. (Image courtesy of pwned.com)

References:

Marche, Stephen (2008). Are Things Getting a Little Violent?. Esquire Aug2008, Vol. 150 Issue 2, p38-39.

Kutner, Lawrence & Olson, K. Cheryl (2008). Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. Simon & Schuster.

Blake, Bill (2008). Go Ahead, Steal My Car. Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 54 Issue 42. pB6-B7.

What is Alternative Media?

My assignment for the week was to look into an alternative media source and find its differences against a corporate or mainstream news source. What is an alternative medium? It preaches advocacy and is an independent non-profit organization that does not aim to sell audiences to advertisers for revenue–unlike corporate media. Rather, alternative media seek to speak out against social issues by targeting a broad audience. 

The alternative medium I chose to follow was Wire Tap, an activist website which aims to create ideas and actions for a new generation. On the site, I found blog posts and articles that covered issues such as youth activism, the environment, our rights and racial justice. One article I found appealing was a piece on how sports activism today is nonexistent amongst our star professional athletes. This article seemed very much written as an opinion and used quotes from various editors of books which covered this issue of sports activism.

Another interesting article I found on the site was in a question and answer format. It was on the topic of fighting poverty with the Green economy, and it discussed the initiative green economy workers and activists are taking to solve the problem of poverty in America. Emily Kersh, an activist, is interviewed on the subject and seems to give yet another opinionated piece to this alternative source. The last of the five articles I read that was interesting was in regard to youth activism in our society. The piece discusses about how the society stops working, capitalism as a whole comes to an end. This article was written by two union directors, another opinionated subject I found very thought provoking.

The corporate/mainstream source I followed was CNN. Unlike Wire Tap, CNN clearly seeks to sell to an elite audience and maximize profits by selling its audience to advertisers as a primary revenue source. All or most of its stories seem to be somewhat factual stories that act as a story teller, giving the readers the facts that they want to hear. Most of the reporters are not at the scenes that they cover because many of the events exist outside of the nation in Iraq and in national legislature. Most of the sources are government sources with statistical facts and quotes.

One thing I noticed different than Wire Tap was that CNN had its content available in several different languages. This could signify that Wire Tap’s audience was perhaps just targeted in the United States, while CNN has a worldwide audience. After closely examining these two different types of media, I am now able to distinguish the characteristics of an alternative medium and its significance in society.

 

A forecast of alternative media spending over the next four years. (Image courtesy of marketingcharts.com)

A Look at Media Roles

My assignment for the week was to monitor three days worth of media coverage regarding the 2008 election from the same media source. The task here was to look through the articles and find the roles the media fulfilled in them. Using Toulmin’s model, I found the roles played in the articles while using the theory’s found in Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman’s book “The Press Effect.”

Although the Register-Guard did a fine job of providing election coverage over the last three days, I believe that the stories could of provided more of a “press as a custodian of fact” role. I read six articles regarding the election. Three of those stories took on the “press as a storyteller” role, two took on the “press as a psychologist” role, and just one took on the “press as a custodian of fact” role. In addition, five of the articles seemed to have plenty of scrutinizing coverage of the Republican Party, while just one article covered the Democratic Party. Certainly, it seemed as if the articles favored the Democratic Party and provided ample criticizing coverage of the Republican Party. 

The first three stories I read took on the “story teller” role. One was the report that Sarah Palin was being investigated for abusing her power by firing her ex-brother-in-law from the police force. The second story is about how John McCain’s supporters vented anger with harsh words for Barrack Obama by calling him a traitor and a terrorist. Lastly, the third “story teller” role explained how Republicans were worried about McCain’s comeback ability. Clearly, these three stories portrayed criticism on the Republican Party more so than the Democratic Party.

The second media role I found in my reading of the election coverage was the “press as a psychologist” role. The first article of this nature portrays the character of McCain, with which he tries to set a respectful tone toward Obama. The story downplays this tone by featuring a quote from Obama saying, “I can take four more weeks of McCain ads, but not four more years of McCain-Bush economics.” The other article taking on the role of a psychologist exists in a report regarding the character of Palin’s spouse. In the article, Todd Palin is regarded as a power hungry husband who spends half of his time in the governor’s office. While these two stories could be “story tellers” in there own right, the fact that they try to show the true nature of McCain and Palin’s spouse reveal that they take on the role of a psychologist.

The third role I found in my reading of the election coverage was perhaps the most crucial role in media today: the “custodian of fact” role. The article that contained this role investigated the relationship between Obama and former real estate developer Antoin Rezko. The story explains the relationship between the two men, while revealing that Obama has in fact cut off ties with Rezko.

The “press as a custodian of fact” role is the most important role in the media today because it looks to find the truth and clear up any misperceptions or errors. In this role, as stated by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, reporters help readers understand conflicting ideas by defining terms and informing the public of any misleading or false statements.

I believe the “press as a custodian of fact” role is most crucial because it brings up history such as promises versus governments, and provides a true analysis instead of a simple description of the facts. While the election coverage from the Register-Guard is adequate, I think it could of used the “custodian of fact” role in more of its coverage and provide a fair analysis for both political parties.

The late Tim Russert was a major proponent in the role of press as a custodian of fact. (Photo courtesy of newsday.com)

Hello World!

How’s it going? My name is Adam Gidaro and I am a freshman at the University of Oregon. I am proud to say that this is my very first blog post and looking forward to writing on the web. My first couple weeks here in Eugene have been awesome as I continue to adjust to the college life. My new found freedom and responsibilities have been exiting and at times overwhelming because of all the opportunities that the University of Oregon has to offer.

I am currently enrolled in a Mass Media & Society class at the university, which I am very exited about. This class will give me the opportunity to improve my writing and critical thinking skills while at the same time making my name available on the web. Having a portfolio of your own work online is crucial in today’s technological world. In addition, this class will also help me follow the upcoming presidential election more closely as we discuss the election race in our classes and in our blogs.

I was born and raised in Sacramento, California; where I fell in love with sports. My passion for sports started when I  was the manager for my brother’s high school basketball team in 5th grade and the ball boy for the football team. Seeing the passion that lies in sports at such a young age has stuck with me all these years. I’ve played pretty much every sport you can think of and I love them all. What fascinates me most in sports is the management side behind them, and how business and marketing concepts apply very much to the success of any sports team or franchise.

I came to the University of Oregon for several reasons. One was that I wanted to come to a place that made me try something new and open up my mind. This university-and the Eugene area in general–is the perfect place to come to meet fascinating and open-minded people. Second, the schools of journalism and business at the U of O are some of the top rated programs in the country. The highly touted Warsaw Sports Business program really drew me into the school because it lied greatly within my interests and passions. In terms of journalism, I plan on either majoring or minoring in communications. I was the sports editor for my high school newspaper and at some point hope to find a job within the Daily Emerald as a sports reporter. I feel that any background in journalism is very important to have in a world that is very much ran by the media on a daily basis.

One of the bigger reasons I came here was the sports. It’s not just that we have great sports here at the university, but I am very interested in how we have become the poster child in college sports through Nike. No other school or team in the country has a bigger tie to Nike than Oregon does. Nike was born here. I feel that surrounding myself in the atmosphere of multi-million dollar sports will allow me to network easier and find great employment opportunities in the sports industry.

Thanks to those of you who read this and I look forward to blog posting more in the very near future.

-Adam