Reflection Post

              In response to the prompt the most useful thing I've learned in class is how to write a paper. Coming from a high school that was very sports oriented there was little focus on academics. One of my peers was even misleadingly dubbed "mentally handicapped"  by the school so he could wrestle. As he had failed to meet the  minimum grade  eligibility requirement. Needless to say I didn't write many papers in high school except for the occasional 2-3 pager and before college I'd never even written an in text citation, something I became  very self conscious about. On top of this general low quality of teaching was my girlfriends public rape trial which I was also attending in her support. Occasionally certain teachers wouldn't allow me to make up assignments I had missed due to the trial. Some even held grudges against me for attending it. This is because the man who had raped my girlfriend was a teacher at my high school as well as the 9news coach of the year for 2010. It was common knowledge to the students that the teacher was sleeping with students but when the administration became aware of the issue they chose to cover it up. Some of the students brought the cover up to the medias attention and the man is now serving a potential life sentence. The administration still runs the school but is facing a very large lawsuit. I feel by now this is pretty obvious but I'll emphasize again that I didn't have much of a high school academic career. This made coming to a prestigious school like the University of Denver a bit intimidating to me and I worried if I would be "less educated" than my peers. I showed up in the fall and have found out that I was right. Most of my peers attended private schools and came in with college credit from AP and IB classes. I attended a public school and came in with no college credit. I have told professor Leake and my peers bits and pieces of this story before but I've yet to explain the whole thing. I guess this in part due to my own insecurities. I knew little of how to write a paper before professor Leake's class and I'm still learning, but arent we all? I cannot say the class has transformed me into an amazing writer but I am a better one. Professor Leakes methods of peer review and general paper revision helped me helped me open up to criticism. I was never singled out in any way or made fun of for what I my "lack of education." Professor Leake's class provided a comfortable environment for growth and helped me learn how to become a better writer. I know my writing could still use a lot of work and I'm terrible at elaborating on topics but I still feel I have made an immense amount of progress in my writing and I can honestly say I've tried my hardest. I know I have a long way to go but this class has been an invaluable opportunity to me. So thank you professor Leake for a wonderful class and for sharing your insight. It has truly been a pleasure.

Thank you,
        Sean Duncan (aka the kid who didn't know what an in-text citation was)

Life of a news story rough draft (no conclusion)

On April 5^th, 2010 a site known as wikileaks, infamous for releasing classified material to the public, published a video of two American army apache helicopters opening fire on a dozen innocent citizens in the city of New Baghdad, Iraq. Among the victims were 6 men, two Reuters news staff members named Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, as well as two children. The News reporters were killed along with the other 6 adults and the two children were severely wounded and sent to an Iraqi hospital. The instance itself occurred on July 12^th, 2007 and was pursued heavily by Reuters in an attempt to find out what happened to their reporters. Reuters tried to obtain the video under the Freedom of Information act in 2007 but failed. When Wikileaks released the video under the title “Collateral Murder” a worldwide controversy began over the actions of the pilots and their potential violations of the Rules of Engagement and immediately sides were taken. The main points of controversy in the 39 minutes of unedited footage are in regards to a camera, a van, and the diction of the pilots.

The media became a political battleground with sources like rightpolitics.net (a large Jewish Conservative website) offering politically charged statements like “Liberal fucktards, to liberals and all those who slander the military, every death is murder, and every soldier is suspect.” The Guardian, MSNBC and The Huffington Post all took the sides of the victims and, in their articles about the video, spoke very harshly against the actions of the soldiers while on the other hand The Weekly Standard, NY Times, and the Jewish conservatives took their stance and offered their sympathy towards the troops.

The van that was a major point of controversy was being driven by two men attempting  to collect the wounded and dead when the helicopters opened fire on the van and the unarmed men despite identifying the two children in the back of the van. The Huffington post criticized this portion of the video and a pilot heavily when he was quoted as saying “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle” while the right side and the weekly standard called the van “fair game even if the men weren’t armed.”

The dialogue between the pilots was also a large factor as to why stances were taken in this issue. The dialogue can be seen as questionable to say the least and provides insight as to what the pilots were thinking. It was extremely interesting to see how the soldiers’ intentions came into question mainly due to their conversation. It was easy to tell certain things were taken out of context in certain articles in order to cater to a sources motives. The Huffington post for example used a quote from one of the pilots that read “come on let us shoot” and described the pilot as “bloodthirsty.”  The tonality of the text also helped add cues as to which direction these variables swayed the story. For example, sources that sided more with the soldiers, such as the NY Times, described the reporters and other adults that were killed as “insurgents,” whereas those that took the “insurgents” side chose instead to describe them as “victims.” So Samuel Harris’ themes of purpose, audience, and author do apply here. The bias created by an author does in fact manifest a purpose behind the story and in fact, that bias is generally directed for a specific audience.

The camera being carried by the Reuters camera men Chmagh and Eldeen was supposedly mistaken by the pilots as an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) and was thus, supposedly, seen as a threat. The point brought up by those criticizing the Pilot was that he was viewing the situation in full color, not black and white like in the video, and was clearly able to identify the camera despite what his descriptions to his superiors stated. This point surprisingly wasn’t discussed much in the mainstream media when compared to the destruction of the van but it dominated the comments sections of every article. Everywhere comments flared up from both sides attacking and condemning one another, but these comments were not useless contradiction. The people that commented were insightful in their postings. One poster by the username of Sean6399 wrote “Anyway, the callous disregard for human life exhibited by the soldiers may be disturbing­, but it should not be surprising­. That mental attitude towards "the enemy" is cultivated in military culture. It is necessary, because it's rather difficult to motivate soldiers to stick their bayonets in fellow humans that they feel empathy towards.”

These ideas are shared in the comments sections and forums of every article and viewpoints and opinions exhibit strong emotions. In this enviroment sharing of information occurs between all of those involved. What this means is that people are learning, discussing, and thus cultivating more accurate and truthful stories than before. The collective is now overtaking the mainstream media. 60 years ago the only way to receive news was through picking up a newspaper but with the technological advancements of communicational devices information is more readily available than ever. Now anyone can make information public through the Internet at any point in time they choose. People are becoming informed through sources other than the mainstream media and this story is also proof of that fact. When examining the dates of the articles published the smaller blogs had first heard of this story, it then spread to the Huffington Post and The Weekly Standard and they published articles the day the video was released on April 5^th, 2010. The NY times and MSNBC were both a day late and reported their first stories on the subject on April 6^th, 2010.

In my personal opinion I believe that the pilots in this situation were aware of their actions. This appears to me to be a blatant misuse of force. It is astonishing to see media sources like the Weekly Standard defend the atrocious actions of these troops and call this gruesome video a “sensational gimmick that succeeded in driving tons of media attention and traffic to wikileaks site.” It seems that the followers of these sources have not watched the video for themselves. The video highlights the tragic, gruesome, and often times merciless nature of war. It shows two pilots murdering  nearly a dozen innocent civilians by misrepresenting the situation to their superiors. The fact the media can even label these victims as “insurgents” makes me sick to the core. It is important though to show how information can be kept secret from the public and more importantly how incredible powerful the collective is becoming. Groups like Anonymous and the 99% are growing like wildfire  and are becoming so incredibly advanced that they can hacking government databases. Anonymous is even said to be approaching the point where they could hack into the power grid. We are in a time where the truth has become a powerful weapon of exploitation and the people are sick of being lied to and so citizens have developed ways to uncover the truth. 

Taking an Approach

I would describe Joseph Harris' "taking an approach" as transforming one thing into another. There is a retention of material but the external form may change. Harris says it's when "The original does not go away but is remade into something new." The NY Times and the blog I have been following, young entrepreneur can be seen as "taking an approach" because they both rewrite stories with that can change the context of the original story. Certain bias sways everything one way or another and these stories are "transformed" essentially into entirely new stories. They retain the same fundamental building blocks but as a whole the stories have been changed. This makes it easy to see the potential corruption of the truth due to these motivated manipulations of the truth. Smaller companies and blogs may tend to agree with certain larger news corporations and so may acknowledge them in some way. Harris spoke about this as one of the three strategies of "taking an approach." These strategies are acknowledging influences, turning an approach on itself, and reflexivity. Generally these terms are all forms of "mirroring" other writers. It seems to be a form of agreement between writers through text and can be seen as a form of ideological alliance. Look at how many times Shakespeare’s plays have been redone for a perfect example of changing the context of a text while still retaining the plot, aka "taking an approach." This is exactly the same thing that news sources do when they write stories.

Rewrite

My experience reading the NY times has been a terrible one. In fact, I'd even say I grieve doing it. Every morning I have to wake up an hour and a half before class and read the news. I find most of the stories negative and depressing, especially the ones about foreign policy. I find there is a small bias in the NY times occasionally but for the most part it is a very reliable news source. Recently I have been reading a lot about the problems in Syria and the middle east. The controversy around this region is incredible right now and with Russia and China petitioning the UN security councils call for peace Syria has gained international backing. I am intrigued to see how the UN will respond to this. The middle east seems to be at a cultural turning point which is why I am so interested in the region. As far as my literacy habits are concerned I really feel as though they have changed an incredible amount for the wrong reasons. In general however I feel keeping up with current events is a great depressive detriment to society and the individual. You can read about anything in a newspaper and the wide range of topics covered allows for a very wide demographic, that is, if you enjoy reading about starving children as you sip your morning coffee and eat that oh so delicious bagel. Recently I read a blog post from one of my peers from China regarding the cultural differences between China and the US and the difference in work ethic between the two countries. Hearing her perspective on the issue was a bit odd at first but overall enlightening. This event brought to light the reality of the stories I read about every day and the important nature of them all. Reading her post made me realize that these events aren’t just stories from a far-away land but that real people are going through these events. So in some ways the news is important, however, it still does not change the tone of the reports. People simply don't want to hear about depressing things. 




I rewrote and revised this argument from a pro news stance to a more negative news stance. I attempted to do this by changing keywords throughout the passage. What was originally "Crucial" became "Important" and occasionally I replaced certain sentences as well. The important part to me was that the story's essence remained constant in both passages. 

Countering

Harris's idea of "countering" can be seen as a point of divergence between two writers. Harris does however clarify that countering is not in fact a form of nullification but a suggestion to a different way of thinking. He coins the phrases "yes, but..." and "on the other hand" as examples of countering. He says that there are three main ways to create the divergence point needed in order to counter an argument. These ways include arguing the other side, uncovering values, and dissenting. Oddly enough I couldn't find an example of countering in recent blog posts in young entrepreneur. Most articles are more about the forwarding and relay of new information as opposed to the countering of other data or information. The lack of "countering" in the site might also be due to the quantitative nature of economics and business that makes up the entire subject content of the site. Statistics leads little room for speculation based opinions other than in regards to their validity so it only makes sense that their is few "countering" blog posts. There are examples of "countering" in the sites articles but as far as my understanding goes this post was only analyzing blog posts. After having read this portion of "rewriting" I will say that I was enlightened to how many news sources use "countering."  Every political news source offers some wonderful example of "countering" and many political figureheads also "counter" their opponents opinions on a regular basis. This example also shows the intentions of writers may lead them to leave out, alter, or misuse information. As a politician might disregard a major counterargument a writer may also disregard information in order to prove his or her point. As a whole "Countering" still leads to the uncovering of truths but is much more subject to corruption than "forwarding."

Forwarding

     Harris's definition of forwarding is described by him as "moving bits of text and paper around." A writer, Harris argues, "Forwards" when he or she takes pieces of text or images and uses them in a new context. This is as Harris calls it, a circulatory system of information that, while maintaining the same fundamental elements, still provides for a wide range of twist in a story. Harris explains how there are at least four ways of "forwarding" which are illustrating, authorizing, borrowing, and extending. In the young entrepreneur blog I have been following I have noticed every story comes from forwarding. In fact Young Entrepreneur writes all of its articles based off of other websites and news sources. It is astounding to see how the usage of "forwarding" has increased as information becomes more readily and instantly available. It is also surprising to see how apparent "forwarding" is in blogs. It seems as though because blogs are much more opinion based they tend to have more "forwarding" in them, quite possibly due to the informal nature of blogs. There is a spin on every blog post and on an individual level blogs should be questioned for their bias and validity. However our society has reached a point where the wide variety of opinions has allowed the discovery of new truths in stories and, as a collective whole, the blogosphere is incredibly accurate. It literally can be viewed as millions of detectives trying to understand new stories and clues to the truth. And as time has told truths have been discovered thanks to the likes of the blogosphere. One example is the recent Arab Spring in the Middle East that was mainly driven by the media and the blogosphere. Images of the devastation were shot out worldwide in every direction and in a matter of minutes people were becoming aware of the event. Throughout the internet opinions were being injected into the internet and soon enough the forwarding of information had caused a revolution. So although certain things about a narrative are altered on an individual scale as a whole the different methods of forwarding help produce a more accurate and concise presentation of the narrative.

Rhetorical Analysis

Young Entrepreneur is aimed largely at, well, young entrepreneurs. It targets a demographic of innovative small business owners and entrepreneurs and its stories mainly cover economic and political issues and its bias seems to sway a little bit to the right. The site also pushes many innovative business ideas that cover all areas of the field such as marketing and management.