Media Law & Literacy

I’ve tried to keep my online presence limited because I don’t want embarrassing pictures from my youth to haunt me when I transition from college to the working world. It’s exciting as a young person to try out different paths and see what works best for you  - with friends, majors, ideas  - knowing that it’s okay to change direction and even make some mistakes along the way before finding a road you really want to follow. However, I don’t want to make my adventures and misadventures public for the world to see, so I keep my social media accounts private. I know that for many young people, it’s important to their self-esteem to have a big online footprint. Some are even willing to sacrifice their reputations to attract more followers, but that’s not me. I use social media mostly to post what I’ve been doing with my family, friends, and my dog.  I do “like'' and comment on things that are important to me, such as political issues and animal welfare. In 2016, a mother took ...

Thanks to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and not having a sedition act, political cartoonists can make their points about President Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of Covid 19. Trump has been in an alternate universe about the virus, claiming he has done a “wonderful job“ to control it; that it is well “under control”, and that it should “soon disappear.” Since all three claims are false, cartoonists are revealing the truth. My favorite has a MAGA couple at a morgue. Several drawers, with toe-tagged bodies have been pulled out. Naming two of Trump’s favorite targets, the man says to the woman: “Gotta hand it to the media and deep state—this is the most convincing hoax I’ve ever seen.” “Hoax” is also a favorite Trump word, which is ironic since Trump has lied publicly almost 20,000 times as President, according to the “Washington Post”. Another cartoon criticizes Trump’s failed covid rhetoric by showing a man who believed Trump that the virus is over, and followed Trump’s adv...

The video showing the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police sparked the Black  Lives Matter protests and became one of the biggest new stories of the year. But the video wasn’t taken by a journalist or put online by  a traditional media outlet, and it wasn’t vetted by anyone. Seventeen year old Darnella Frazier shot it on her cellphone, then posted it on Facebook and of course it went viral, just as she had hoped. “My video went worldwide for everyone to see and know,” she later said on Facebook. She didn’t want the police to be able to sweep it under the rug. This is a powerful example of what’s known as Citizen Journalism, where someone who isn’t a professional journalist distributes information - words, pictures or video - outside of the mainstream media. Frazier was able to share it with the world, instantly, on her own terms. Technology has made it possible for just about anyone to be a citizen journalist; all it takes is a  cellphone and an internet conne...