Chapters 3-6

Chapter 3:
I had heard that the statistics about global warming weren’t good; but to read that it’s progressing three times faster than originally predicted. I have to admit I don’t pay much attention to the news, but the fact that I have heard about everything that happened with Paris Hilton that week and not this is sort of weird to me.
Once again, the comparison between what is important in the news and what isn’t surprises me. In December 2007, Fox, ABC, CBS, and MSNBC all covered the “Simpson jinx,” referring to her jinxing her boyfriend’s football game. While at the same time in Paris, world leaders met at a conference to raise billions of dollars to support Palestine.
My question is...How can the “important” world stories be filtered out and replaced with these “junk food” stories?
Chapter 4:
The story of the small-town farmer residents in rural Pennsylvania resisting the dumping of sewage sludge from other states was something I enjoyed reading. I grew up in a small farm town in Connecticut, and I know a lot of families that make their money off of the land they work on. I was glad to hear that that town and over one hundred others resisted the corporate feedlots. It’s news like this that I would like to hear and no the overwhelming number of negative stories we hear and read in the news.
I was surprised to read about Cuba and its efforts for health care. I didn’t know that they were so pro active about creating opportunities for better health care. No offence to Cuba, but if they can do it, why can’t we?
My question is (after this statement)…Freshman year I did a research paper on the news and how the majority of the news reported is negative. If there are positive news stories there, why doesn’t the media want to share them with us?
Chapter 5:
I thought it was interesting that on the front page of newspapers, 53 percent of the quotations from stories expressed opposition to the MCA. I thought this was interesting because I figured there would most likely be more positive stories about it. And since 80 percent of the front page quotes do take a definite position, it seems like there isn’t much room for opinion about this topic. It would be nice for this topic to be a little more objective.
The report done that showed 43 percent of quoted sources of their data expressed opposition to the MCA in one way or another makes me think about how the news paper differs from television news. It seems like newspapers are more critical of topics such as the MCA compared to the way television news might report on it.
My question is…Should newspapers deliver the news to balance out the news we see in TV, or should they both be balanced independently?