My Own Powerful Media

My name is WENDY I've been at zeum for about 2 weeks. I like zeum. It's actually really fun - I like seeing the kids have fun and I be having fun too. What I like about everybody who works here is they are really friendly and nice. When i first came I was kind of scared and shy but now that I know everybody and I've worked with almost everybody... its actually pretty fun.

Well this morning we had a workshop with World Savvy and Theo, a photo journalist and Katina from World Savvy came in to talk to us. They talked about Cindy Sheehan how she went to Texas and sat in President Bushes ranch because she was mad that her son died in the war. Theo had taken a lot of different pictures and the picture that was different - the one that ended up getting published - was the one where she was like screaming and she was holding a cross with her son's name up high. We talked about why newspapers choose the photos they choose. They choosed the picture they think is best to one that actually relates to the article they writing about.

All the attention was on Cindy. There was a sign that was against the war and another one that wanted the war to continue. Some one made a poster that said "god bless bush and the troops." There was a chair that had a sign that said "why is bush afraid to talk to cindy?" Then they also showed us another picture where a 9 year old little girl that had another sign that said "thank you Mr. president for staying in Iraq." But in the pictures it seemed like a lot of people were supporting Cindy. After he showed us an article that they used the picture that said "why is this man afraid to talk to Cindy?" and in the bottom it said "i'm so sorry" then it had another picture with a family and Bush they looked pretty sad. Theo told us about a lady that lost her son in the war to and she sent a letter to bush and it said that she still supports him after what happen with her son. Some of these picture were chosen to be in some news papers and some in others. Newspapers have a lot of power -they pick the pictures based on what story they want to tell.

Pictures can be interpreted in different ways. people interpret pictures the way they want. In pictures you can't actually hear or see everything the people do, so that's when they say stuff about the people just by looking at it, even if is not really true.

Then Theo talked about an immigrant family, he showed us a video with pictures. Some girl was talking about how Americans say that supposedly they're taking their jobs knowing that they could get better jobs than them and that they would never do job they do. She also said that almost all Americans think immigrants are criminals when that's not true.

After we finished talking about that we got to make our own article about topics we don't see in the news and that peoples don't actually talk about for example they only talk about teens when they fight or kill somebody but they never say the good things they only publish the negative stuff.

I wrote about how everybody thinks that all immigrants are criminals and that is NOT TRUE. I choose to write about that cause my parents came to San Francisco as immigrants and they are not criminals. They came here because they wanted a better future for my family. The only reason why my parents came here was for more money cause my grandmother was sick and they needed to pay her medical bills cause everything in El Salvador is expensive.

THIS IS SOME OF THE WORK OTHER ZEUMMASTERS WERE DOING THIS MORNING.