October 29th

Hi all,
During the last session, we talked about the structure of the course. It would be focusing on two main areas:
* The media in general: What is the media, problems and potential
* How the medis influence us: At the end of the course, we should be able to detect the writer's bias and to be sensitive to any subjectivity.
After this presentation, we talked about the first part: What is the media? The answer was classical: Radio, TV, Dailies, newspapers and Internet. But we didn't make any distincin between these medias. For example, some of them are too general (Le Monde, Le Figaro) and others are specific (La Croix, Les Echos), we can also find some local medias.
These medias are facing a lot of problems, for instance in terms of advertising,licensing, coverage, sources and also a lack of staff.
After, we watched a video talking about recession in the adult industry. In fact, the video presents the effets of crisis on pornography and shows this industry only from an economical angle without any ethical reference.Then, we read an article which was talking about the same subject and had exactly the same view on the phenomenon.
To be discussed!

October 22nd

Hello everyone! Here is a summary of our third class:

We started off talking about the different media (radio, TV, internet, blogs, Twitter, newspapers and news magazines). We discussed about their 'freshness' (TV versus daily newspapers), their easiness of access (radio vs Internet), their biases (daily newspapers vs blogs). Also, our teacher commented on how Twitter can be a great source of instantaneous and very useful information - for example, at the protests in Iran, people would 'tweet' about where the police was, so as to alert the others of possibly dangerous paths; however, since it's impossible to know whether a tweet is true or not, the police could have spread false information on Twitter, to confuse and catch some of the protesters.

Secondly, we talked about the news video 'France Telecom suicides', from CNN:

We had been assigned to use it as a dictation; however, some of us did not know what a dictation was, so our teacher clarified that it was essentially a literal transcript. As for the video itself, we concluded that it was quite short and neutral compared to the French media coverage, which featured extensive reports on the subject. Finally, we talked a little bit about the types of stories that CNN covers: e.g., one can expect to find lots of 'hard news' from Colombia, but very few reports from France, which tend to focus on lifestyle aspects.

That's it! See you all next week!

October 15th

Hello, everybody! Here is a brief description of what we did in our last class:

First of all, we were given more details about the contents of the report that we have to do. For the medium chosen, we shall be able to tell: (i) what it does and does not cover; (ii) what they put an emphasis on; (iii) and wether it has any bias. We can also compare it to another source from our own countries. As for the size, it should not be longer than three pages - two pages are probably OK.

After those bits of information, we talked about the sources that we use to get the news. We found out that most of us read or watch the news in our respective native languages, and mainly not from the hard copies of daily newspapers. Our teacher, then, gave us a short presentation on the anglo-saxon way of writing a news report and organizing a newspaper. Basically, the main guiding principle is: "once you finish reading an article, you don't know the point of view of the journalist"; however, bias can still be expressed in a number of ways: by the headlines chosen, by the images associated with the article, by its placement on the newspaper. Even the very inclusion of a story reveals editorial choices - thus, when comparing different sources, it is important to look at what is left out.

Finally, to better illustrate the points made, we read the article 'Middle classes turn to car park handouts', by Sarah O'Connor. The class ended with a little 'contest': each of us had to summarize the article in just one phrase - the shorter, the better.

That's it! I'm sorry it took me so long to post it... But you know, 'better late than never'!

October 8th

During this first session, everyone was introduced to the class. It is a very international group with students from Morocco, Columbia, Brazil and France, students with an international experience and a teacher from New York.

We will have to individually choose a British or American medium to focus on during the whole semester, and compare this medium to another one from our country. Here are the choices:

• British media:

- Dailies : Times of London, The Observer, The Guardian, The Financial Times.

- Magazine : The Economist.

- TV channels : BBC, Skynews.

• American media:

- Dailies : The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times.

- Magazines : Time, Newsweek.

- TV channels : CNN-INT, HLN, MSNBC, FOX NEWS.

Remember to be late if you want to post messages on this blog :)

Camille

Welcome everyone!

Here's Richard Noble's English class blog.
We'll be studying "News and views" in American and British media and sharing our findings on this blog.