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.

Censorship In Our Media

Long time no blog. This morning at Zeum we had a World Savvy workshop about photography, censorship & the media. When I first heard the words: censorship and the media, I immediately thought of human rights, the Iraq war, and Google. The news informed us of China trying to limit search results on Google, and the US government trying to cover up the current situation in Iraq. But today we focused on things a little closer to us, like censorship of our school newspaper or artists we listen to. By seeing censorship in a new light, I got to learn more about how it affects me everyday.

When I got to the workshop, we started doing the agree/disagree activity. A situation was presented to us and we chose whether to agree or disagree. After all the situations were presented, we would discuss each one and why we made the decisions we made. At first, everyone stood firm on their side, but once we discussed each one, "what-if situations" were thrown at us, making us question our choice. In the end, it was clear that it was hard to draw a line between censoring to prevent offensiveness and profanity, and exploiting censorship as a way to manipulate the public. Our next activity was an experiment to see how much of what we see in the media is controlled by one big corporation. The results were mind shocking, showing us that though we may get our sources from a couple different places, most of them are owned by one big corporation that could possibly be just showing us a side of the story that they favor.

Through these activities, I got to see how censorship is closer to me than I once thought it was. Censorship, like most things, has a good and a bad side. It all depends on what you limit and where you draw the line. But once you allow one thing to be uncensored, it opens many other doors and controversies over what else should be uncensored. Often, different people will view one thing differently. Some people may be offended but some may see it as perfectly fine, and wrong to censor. Even at school, you may think it's right to have the school censor things like profanity on the school newspaper, but what if one teacher thought that a certain article was inappropriate and the writer didn't? The battle of censorship rages on, and the decisions towards what should be censored is affecting our view of the world everyday. Sometimes what we think is the truth, could be just one big corporation showing you their favorite side of the story to try to get you to think a certain way. In a world where everything is controversial and the truth is debatable, where should censorship in the media stand?