My first blog post is in response to Meredith Colias, and her article "C-SPAN Bus Rolls into Town, but Students Still Skeptical of Political Process" (Link to the article) published in the Rapid City Journal on August 30th. In retrospect, it is clear that Ms. Colias already knew the article that she wanted to write before she met with our class, as evidenced by the lack of quotes from the 25-minute interview we had with her which covered several news topics. Instead, she waited until the conclusion of the interview, when we were laughing and joking with each other, then put the following to us: "How do you think some kids your age would respond [to things such as the low voter turnout]?" The quotes in the published article are our responses to that post-interview question, not our personal views on political involvement.
I am also baffled as to why the article was posted on the front of the Rapid City Journal considering that it only interviewed students at one high school but proceeded to brand all teens under one banner. More importantly, the article lost its focus. The article should have focused on the appearance of the C-SPAN bus and its impact, not the political views of teens. Questions such as, "Did you find the bus intriguing?" or "How do you feel about the C-SPAN scholarship program?" would have been more appropriate.
Looking back on it, I realize that people should think of all the ways the media can twist a story before making any comments on it. A simple story about an informational bus visiting our school became an affront to those interviewed, our teacher, and the student body as a whole. I will now go forward taking extra steps to carefully articulate all my thoughts and emotions about a subject when discussing anything with the media.
I totally agree with you. Though I was not there, it still thoroughly troubled to see my school and classmates represented this way. I believe the RCJ should publish a follow up article, if not just send a letter to our school in apology. Though I understand that the RCJ is looking for hits on articles, this is just too far.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this article should not have been published on the front page, especially after the editor told us that this article was one of the least important articles of the week. The article would have been much more worthy of front page status if it had highlighted that in today's world, teenagers are still making an effort to become involved in government, as seen in the participation of the C-SPAN bus and Giles and Andrew's presense at Boy's State.
ReplyDeleteThis post is completely true. I guess we need to learn to not trust the media which is unfortunate, but I guess that is what the world has come to. In the past the news was almost entirely objective; however, this is clearly no longer the cases.
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