Little Intrigues
If you have a busy schedule, then it is likely that you don’t get a lot of time to sit and watch the news, or to read through a favorite news website in order to find the most recent happenings. If you are like me, you will depend on the “one liners” in the headlines that intrigues you into feeling the need to read it.
I open my yahoo mail up every day and when I do, there are lists of things that show up that are considered top news. Unfortunately, I do not get time to open them up and read about them, but at least I have a vague idea of what is happening. I then take this information with me once I have gotten my children ready for school, downstairs for breakfast. This is where a good chunk of my daily intrigue comes from. I get to turn on the news for about 15 minutes before running out the door. Next, to the car we go, we live about 22 minutes away from the kids school which give a lot of time for tidbits of information between songs in the car (that is only if I am not giving spelling test, or some other type of review while driving). This is enough bits and pieces of information to keep me curious all day.
By the time I get to work I have so many questions! I usually ask “hey did anybody hear about __________? This is where I get the rest of the information to try to fill in the blanks. It at least relieves my intense curiosity for a while. I have to admit, by the time I get home, depending on the news that day, all I want to do is turn on the news. Between baseball practice, games, a busy dancing daughter, and my school schedule, this is not always possible. In the desperate times of deep curiosity when the daily news was quite interesting, I pull out the big guns! I call my friend. He knows everything! This way I do not have to try to fish around channels, or the internet in order find the conclusion or running story of what is happening. It works quite well.
There are a few snags to my system. One of them being, when you rely on bits and pieces of information coming from different sources you can never be sure of the slant you are getting. The way the informant perceives the information and then retells it is impactful. Simple connotations can lead you to believe a positive is a negative or the other way around.
It is important to consider you sources. A liberal person or news cast may find something to be good news. I’m sure everyone is familiar with prop 8 so we will use that. Depending on the side you are on, a gay rights parade is either good news or bad news. They way you see it will affect the way you report, if you are for it you will report the success of the parade, or the abuse that was displayed by the opposing side, however; if you are against it the reports will show the more as much opposite information as possible.
Its intriguing how these English assignments get you thinking and noticing the little things as well to consider other ideas. My blog this week was similar to the topic you selected for your blog as well. I choose an event and the obstacles in my life that prevent me staying up to date. After a few days after writing my blog and reading your post, I realized just how similar we all our in how we obtain information.
ReplyDeleteI had not thought of news radio. It’s probably the one that I like best especially since we all spend quite a bit of time in the car. My favorite station is KNX-News. Sometimes it’s a little one sided and the anchor is rude to some people that call in, though I figure a person decides to call in then they already know what to expect.
You also commented on reading headlines on Yahoo when accessing your email. I also do this. The problem with that though is it’s not in depth news reporting. Yahoo must place it there for our busy lives. This is where the problems start when we just read headlines and not the actual articles or do our own research on the issues.
I think your way of obtaining information is very common among students and parents, as it should be. Nobody really has time to sit down and read any article of their choosing, that’s why we skim the titles or looks for short paragraphs. That is the fastest and most effective way of obtaining information. I myself do the same thing, I look on my phone, usually between classes and practice, and I look at the top news stories, which in the heading usually give a brief summary. If I have time I read the articles that catch my eye, and if I don’t have time, I ask my friends at school or at practice “hey did you hear about”. Or I ask my parents later in the day, and they usually fill me in. Like you said this way of getting information is not always reliable, because you are getting your information from so many different sources. How do we know what is reliable and what is not? Well the truth is we don’t really know the exact staory until we do research ourselves, because our friends might exaggerate, and we might interpret something the wrong way from a title. So the only way we truly know, is doing the research ourselves, if we have the time of course.
ReplyDelete