Chapter Thirteen

1.     Do you read international news? Why or why not?

If I would have answered this question six months ago my answer would have been no. However, since then I have taken a Global Education class that required me to select a news story (such as a national disaster or political issue) and find a newspaper online from three different countries and blog about the differences and similarities. I really enjoyed this project and it really opened my eyes up to the different news sources and the different biases of different countries. I think that to be truly educated, you should get your news from a variety of news sources, internationally, to be well rounded and to avoid getting a bias of news and misinformation.

2.     What steps can reporters and editors take to cover media ownership issues in a better way?

I think that it is really important that reporters and editors make sure that within their own organization (such as The Hickory Daily Record) that reporters and editors are assigned to a broad variety of topics, and that the reporters take turns reporting on different issues. I also think that everyone should focus more on the news being reported than who owns the media.  Responsible reporting is also a very important part of media ownership. When reporters are reporting on this issue, it is important to remain unbiased as well as to remain dignified even if they don’t agree with the opinions that they’re reporting on.

3.     Is there such a thing as a global village? What does this concept mean to you?

I think that the global village does exist, and to me, this concept is the global community that we create when we combine the different media sources, internationally and nationally, to create one pot of information that anyone can gather their opinions and news sources from. I think that most people are familiar with the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child” and I think this also applies to a global village raising a child of the earth. It takes more than just one country’s news source or one city’s news source to make a person well educated and well rounded.