Running head: YOU ARE THE NEWS DIRECTOR OF A LOCAL TELEVISION

You are the news director of a local television station. The city council has just voted to close city parks 3 days a week to save money. Meanwhile, a major celebrity has died. The park story has greater effect on your viewers, but the celebrity death will get bigger ratings? Which do you make your lead story and why? Explain the effect of relationships among television, movies, and electronic games with culture. Jason Anderson HUM/176 March 6, 2011 Amy Restrepo

YOU ARE THE NEWS DIRECTOR OF A LOCAL TELEVISION

You are the news director of a local television station. The city council has just voted to close city parks 3 days a week to save money. Meanwhile, a major celebrity has died. The park story has greater effect on your viewers, but the celebrity death will get bigger ratings? Which do you make your lead story and why? Explain the effect of relationships among television, movies, and electronic games with culture. A news director of a local television station has a very difficult job; it is never easy trying to decide what news is really worthy and what is not. One has to make sure that that the news is reported and is still entertaining. If it were my job to choose a lead story, I would choose to make it about the city parksand how they are closed three days a week, instead of the story about the celebrity's death. Myreasoning for this is forthe simple fact that the city parks being closed will impact the locals who are near the parks. Buta celebrity's death will be a story for a few days without being important to the community. Inother words, the park story shouldnot be overlooked for one second because of the celebrity death story. Each local news station has specific obligations to their communities. They must report on local news and some world news. Entertainment news should not be a major priority for these stations. Thesecommunities rely on the stations to know what is going on locally. Since there are so many waysfor people to get the news, the story about the celebrity's death could be featured on the news'website. Then later, the station could change the lead story to the city parks being closed. Thanks to technology and the many different ways to deliver the news, it is possible tohave multiple leading news stories. Humans in the past did not have this capability. It used tobe that newspapers were the main source for local and national

YOU ARE THE NEWS DIRECTOR OF A LOCAL TELEVISION

news, but this changed over thelast century. Nowadays, people can do much more than just read about a story; they canexperience the situation as they watch it on TV. People can see the news and watch the situationunfold rather than simply read about it. After television, the internet became the predominant means of news delivery. This was remarkable because now people are able to see news from allover the world, regardless of where they live. News delivery has evolved greatly in many ways over the years. But with these new methods of delivery come new rules. The main one for televisionand the internet is that corporations must protect what they produce; otherwise they run the riskof having people steal the content. They protect this content with copyrights; those found guiltyof copyright infringement will have legal repercussions. For local TV stations, the local newsshould be the priority because the local viewing area looks to their news station for information about what is going on locally first, then the rest of the world, second, then entertainment news, third. This might bring theratings down a bit, but not enough to have a considerable impact, especially with the celebrity's death story following the city parks story. Another key strategy would be to announce the celebritys death coming up after the story of the parks closing down.

When communication is spread not just between two individuals but rather between tens of millions of people it is known as mass media. Mass media is known as

YOU ARE THE NEWS DIRECTOR OF A LOCAL TELEVISION

the main system of society. "Mass media has many different purposes, such as providing information, entertaining, persuading and also by carrying a general function of culture to millions of people. In order for mass media to exist, there must be an audience. Today's society is very selective; each receiver reacts differently through his or her own experience according to mass media. Therefore, mass media exists in many different forms such as magazines, television, newspapers, internet, motion pictures, and even plays. With avarieties of mass media existing in today's societies there are three major things that seem to have a great impact. These constraints can keep mass media very restricted. The major constraint of mass media is competition. Each form of mass media wants to be the one to target the audience. We as a society have to ask ourselves whether or not our versions of entertainment exhibits any more violence than past forms of recreation, for example gladiatorial games, grand theft auto.When violent actions are either rewarded or not punished, in electronic games, the probability of imitating the behavior increases. Electronic games differ from other forms of media in that they are interactive, repetitive. In the recent years computer and other such electronic games have become quite popular. There are concerns brought up about the influence of these games and whether or not the games should be censored, or forced to reduce the amount of violence. Another major concern is violence on television. For some people around the world television is frequently used by parents as a babysitting tool and there is a lack of interaction between child and parent. Aggression in children could be on the rise because of all the violence that they see on television. The children who are more

YOU ARE THE NEWS DIRECTOR OF A LOCAL TELEVISION

closely identified with either parent are less aggressive; when a child is given the opportunity to spend quality time with their parents their level of aggression is reduced. People are quick to blame violence in our society on television, movies or video games because they are simple believable targets. We have to look beyond this disinformation and attack the real causes for the violence in our society. Violence in television programs, movies, or video games will not make a person kill someone else. People watch violent images all the time, and only a very small percent of them actually commit violent crimes. Research on the subject does not necessarily support the argument, but they do not counteract it either. The research is too often inconclusive and to base our opinions on this matter without concrete evidence is foolish. Violence on television, movies and video games is not the problem. The problem is that we wrongfully blame these media sources for violent crimes, rather than put the blame where it rightfully belongs.Although the violence present in these media sources may help instigate a violent act, it is never the only cause. A person does not go from being a perfectly adapted member of society, watch a person get shot in a movie, and then go out and shoot someone.