Harrison Salisbury

On December 25 1966, Harrison Salisbury, assistant managing editor of the New York Times, filed a report from Hanoi chronicling the damage to civilian areas in North Vietnam by the U.S. bombing campaign. Salisbury stated that Nam Dinh, a city about 50 miles southeast of Hanoi, was bombed repeatedly by U.S. planes starting on June 28, 1965. Salisbury's press report caused a stir in Washington where Pentagon officials expressed irritation and contended that he was exaggerating the damage to civilian areas.
On December 26, the U.S. Defense Department conceded that American pilots bombed North Vietnamese civilians accidentally during missions against military targets. The spokesman restated administration policy that air raids were confined to military targets but added, "It is sometimes impossible to avoid all damage to civilian areas."
I thought it was really great to learn how influential reporters were in the 1960s. Their words were taken so seriously by American people that the government would have to cover themselves up after articles were published.

The Truth Comes Out about the Korean War...60 Years Later.

I usually go to NPR's website when I am in the mood for news articles that will make me laugh. This morning, however, I saw a story about the Korean War on the homepage. I was drawn to it not only because we have been studying America in the 1950s, but because it looked like it was a good story. Here is the link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128092817
The story essentially says that recently documents have been discovered by the CIA that speaks of the Korean War from inside the government. Basically, they have uncovered documents that the government clearly did not want the public to know.
I was actually surprised that some reporter like Ed Murrow did not get the undercover story regarding this war, and got me to thinking about how much goes on behind the scenes of our own government today. Clearly there always has been and always will be a line that reporters are not able to cross. Unfortunately, I foresee an article similar to this one published 60 years down the road about our War in Iraq.

Edward R. Murrow

"A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom - it's gone."

Ed Murrow is arguably America's first broadcast journalist. His career took off during WWII, when he reported from Europe about the war. Murrow was born in 1908 in Guilford County, North Carolina. He majored in speech at Washington State University and moved to New York after graduation. He started working at CBS five years later, and the rest is history. Murrow changed the way radio and television presented news.


Murrow’s love of common America led him to seek out stories of ordinary people. He presented their stories in such a way that they often became powerful commentaries on political or social issues. Because Murrow was such a renowned reporter, his words were taken seriously. He stirred up a lot of trouble with his reports on Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the tension eventually led to his partnership with CBS to end.

As I read about Murrow and the stories he reported, I wonder where American broadcast journalism would be today without him. I believe it would be dramatically different. Murrow set a standard that new journalists strived to surpass; and I think without that standard news today would fall short of what we are lucky enough to be exposed to.

Source:
http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=murrowedwar

Radio during WWII

After studying the media during WWI, I thought it would be interesting to look at what it was like during WWII. Just as expected, radio popularity continued to grow during the war. The radio became people's go to medium for information about the war, instead of newspapers. The radio did a good job of keeping variety in their programming; although it was full of news about the war, it still played radio dramas and music for hours at a time.

Advertisements and Women

In today's video we saw the growth of advertisements in the 1800s. I was really interested to see that the first women's deodorant ad used a method that is still used today. The tool is to send the message "if you don't use our product, you will never get a man." Here is a Proactive ad that I think most effectively sends that message.

Of course today the message is much more transparent, but it is still the same idea. This got me wondering why this message is so powerful. Is it really all that effective?

Obama's Use of the Internet during 2008 Election

After I came up with my general idea for Chapter 11 of our textbook, I realized it isn't just media that has learned to use the Internet to its advantage; public figures can too. I was immediately reminded of an article I read on The New York Times (online, I might add) shortly after the election.

The article can be found here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/
The article explains how Obama used advertising on websites such as YouTube or Facebook throughout the election to get his name transmitted out to the public. The last time a presidential nominee used a new medium to his advantage during an election was JFK, and he used the television. Journalists said that Obama's technique has changed politics forever.
I also found when I rediscovered the article that the majority of Obama's online forums and ads were targeted at 18-29 year-olds. Today we know this method was highly successful because an overwhelming majority of voters in this age range voted for Obama. According to MSNBC, youth voters preferred Obama by 30-68%, and they might have been the key to his win.
Obama's Internet campaign further underlines my point that working with the Internet is the best way of staying alive in today's media.