When covering a rural area for a story, journalists need to follow certain approaches for rural ares. Journalists have ways to get the story right, and ways to get the story wrong. There are steps they can use to improve their work. When covering a rural area, reporters oversimplify and miss-characterize the political, social and cultural nature of rural areas. This is wrong. Reporters portray rural America along racial lines, when in fact, rural areas are much more racially diverse than you would think from reading headlines. Rural areas have been much more than white people. This is caused from immigrants taking jobs in industrial and agricultural plants. The majority of the voting population does not end up at the polls. This causes the whole area to be colored red on the graphics of the media. Ways a reporter can get it right, is to know their community. You need to use the power of the people who are already in the community. Journalists have preconceived notions about class and place. This is wrong. This leads to stereotyping and essentially hate speech. The way to get it right, is to go in to get the story in a rural area with an open mind, interviewing the people that actually live there, and are from different ethnic backgrounds so your story is diverse. Reporters edit direct quotations so that it plays to their personal biases. This is wrong. An example being if the interview is someone living in a trailer park that was hit by a tornado, they automatically think the misuse of the English language by them is funny. Automatically thinking, “White Trash.” The way to get it right is to consider the mission. You’re not there to document the negative non-diverse part of the story, you are there to get the part of the story that matters. The tornado and the damage it caused to the residents. Journalists tend to focus on politics and political divide in rural areas. This contributes to dehumanization of a place, and this is dangerous. Ways to get it right are to tap into community resources and getting to know the people of the rural area. Laid off reporters and librarians are excellent forms of resources for information. Also, the best information would be the people who actually live there. Another way to get it right is to find common ground. If you eat food for example, which we all do, establishing a line of connection with the people on this subject will lead to a diverse opinion on the subject. Interviewing people from the same rural area, but from different ethnic backgrounds, will allow you to develop a diverse article when writing it. Ways journalists can increase the under-explored areas of rural reporting, are to research the number of immigrants taking agricultural jobs in the area. Also, meaningful ways people in the area are dealing with the problem.
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Gender Diversity, Feminism Waves Explained
Feminism waves are times in history where women have achieved milestones that they were once not allowed to do, just because they were women. The wave metaphor is a tool we have for understanding the history of feminism in the United States. The first wave of feminism is established as the time period of 1848-1920. First wavers marched, lectured and protested for the right to vote. One example being the woman’s suffrage march in New York city in 1900. In 1848, 200 women met in a church in New York to discuss social , civil and religious conditions and the rights of women. This was when the wave began. One discussion was their right to vote. The 15th Amendments passage in 1870 granting black men the right to vote is what politicized white women and turned them into suffrage. They did not like the fact that they were not granted the right to vote before former slaves. Despite racism, the woman’s movement developed goals for its members. First waves fought not only for white woman suffrage, they also fought for employment, and the right to own property. As the first wave developed, in 1916 the first birth control clinic opened in New York. That clinic today is known as Planned Parenthood. In 1920, congress passed the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment was a great achievement for the first wave. The second wave was from 1963-1980’s. The book, “The Feminine Mystique” was a phenomenon. It told about systemic sexism. The problem wasn’t with women, but the world refused to allow women to exercise creative and intellectual faculties. It gave women the right to be angry. Birth control, credit cards and their own mortgage was part of the second wave for women. The second wave also worked for sexual harassment in the workplace laws, The second wave cared about racism. Abortion and the right to contraception and no forced sterilization were part of the second wave. The third wave of feminism was 1991-? Few people agree what the third wave is. The third wave is said to begin with two things. In 1991 Anita Hills testimony t the supreme court that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her at work, and the music scene of the 90’s. Second wave liked to be called women, third wave liked to be called girls. The third wave does not have one piece of legislation or major social change that belongs to the third wave. The forth wave picks up with the #MeToo movement. A lot of people think the fourth wave is online. Forth wave begins around 2008 when Facebook, Twitter and YouTube joined the culture. By 2013, the forth wave was here. The forth wave means different things to different people. Forth wavers now hold men accountable for their behavior. So no one really knows if we are in the third or fourth wave, and the older generations argue that the #MeToo movement is just a war between the generations.
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth
Digital Diversity, Race and Ethnicity
Viral videos sometimes do not show what actually happened. As a reader and watcher of videos on the internet, one must be careful in what they are looking at. Is it the whole truth? In the article, “Stop Trusting Viral Videos,” catholic high school students visited Washington, D.C. from Kentucky. The students participated in a March for Life. A viral video was shared that appeared to confront and mock American Indians who had participated in the Indigenous Peoples March, taking place the same day. By Saturday, the video was scaled down to a single image. One of the students wearing a , “Make America Great Again” hat and then he smiles before a Omaha tribal elder, a confrontation viewers took as an act of aggression by a group of white youths-against an indigenous community. Online reactions from people were saying the students and their actions were racist. The media must do better with race and reporting. The images the media shows in news coverage’s and videos in general about race and ethnicity remains an image the viewer will have as their view on racism issues. One reason stereotypical depictions remain, is while there are more diverse faces in front of the camera, the people who decide what becomes news largely remain male and white. Pictures of people from different ethnic backgrounds that are on the internet with no explanation of the subject, are sometimes viewed by people as racist. If you show pictures of different people from different ethnic groups, and ask people to look at the pictures and guess the persons education and work background, people will have a different answer. Posting a picture of a Hispanic man to a racist may get an answer that they are uneducated and his job is a grass cutter. The person is not diverse in their thinking. They are stereotyping the picture because of the mans race. The Hispanic man could have a masters degree in art and own his own art gallery. In the article, “Stop Trusting Viral Videos,” what readers did not know was that a new video cast doubt on what the original video had to offer. The new video shot by a member of a Black Hebrew Israelite protest group that had gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, members were mocking passerby’s of all strips. The white students were victims of harassment by them. They tried to defuse the situation by singing over the Black Israelite’s. The encounter between Sandman and Nathan Phillips, the Omaha elder was taken out of context. Because of the newer video at the Lincoln Memorial , the encounter is much longer, and people said it offers clarity about how the conflict truly started to arise.
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