Sunday, May 17, 2015

10 Days of News

Judging by only it's name, FARK.com doesn't sound like a very professional website. It's motto is 'It's not news, its FARK.' which implies that yes, it is supposed to be news, but probably not traditional news, it's unique, it's not like other boring news sites.

The very first story I saw when going on to the website for the first time was Men's beards "found to contain more human poop than a toilet". Needless to say, my first initial impression didn't give me very high expectations for the source and I didn't really take it too seriously. The front page showed stories about corndogs, the word 'boobies' and another story titled simply, 'Penis'.

The website runs on normal people that make accounts and become FARK members, submitting stories written by other sources, stories that they find important, interesting or funny. When you submit a story from another source, you can also write the headline that will show up on FARK, resulting in headlines like 'Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub / The butcher, the baker, the candle stick maker / The tub hadn't been cleaned properly / There were no survivors' 

This sounds like a funny title, what in the world could they mean by that? Curiosity makes you click on it, as with most stories on the site, only to find out that three actual people died in a hot tub, and the title was written to make it sound like it would be a funny article.

FARK seems to like to avoid any heavy subjects, and when they do cover them, they make them into jokes. The first piece of traditional, current event news I saw was on the third day of looking. The article was about ISIS which is a pretty serious topic, but they still made it into a joke. The article was titled 'ISIS says they have 15 more terror cells in America just itching to get gunned down by Paul Blart.' Following the article though, the link from FARK takes you to a seriously written news article on Fox News.

FARK is supposed to be a news site, but in my opinion it doesn't post much news. There's a difference between news and journalism. Journalism, as I have previously written about, is just the spread of information of all kinds. News though, has to be a specific type of information. It should involve a current event, something that is relevant to the last few days. While journalism can be made by anyone, news is more reliable and trustworthy.

So is FARK news? I don't think so, but what then makes it a popular news site? Well, society makes us feel obligated to know about what's happening all over the world at any given time. If you know about these things you're smart and if you don't you're not. Some people might feel obligated to look at some type of news, and they just choose FARK because it presents it in a funny way. Another thing that FARK does that's different is that it really only publishes positive stories, not depressing ones. The reason some people dislike watching the news is because it rarely reports positive stories. FARK fulfills your obligation to look at news, and has funny or entertaining stories instead of sad ones.

There is a certain level of awareness that we should all have about whats going on around us, but if we focus on news so much, it might do more harm than good. We should pay more attention to what's happening immediately around us, and what we can do to help people we care about and our community instead of thinking about something that happened on the other side of the world that we could never help and are no way involved in.

Even if there's something bad happening far far away, there has to be something good happening in your own life, you just have to make sure you living there enough to notice.

Friday, May 1, 2015

Baltimore Satire News Report

- BREAKING NEWS - BREAKING NEWS - BREAKING NEWS - BREAKING NEWS -

*white news anchor sits behind desk shuffles papers and addresses camera*

Susie- Well, it seems we have a breaking story about the violence happening in Baltimore right now. Tim is there on the scene, good evening Tim.

Tim- Good evening, I am here in the streets of Baltimore where there have been violent protests all day. So far a few police officers have been injured. This is incredibly unfortunate, I just can't believe that these protesters are being SO violent. Did you know that a window had been broken?? A WINDOW. It was BROKEN. And at what cost? Susie?

Susie- I mean I just don't understand why everyone is so riled up, it's not like any of them have been injured-
*pauses to listen to earpiece*
Well...  I mean no one has been KILLED is what I'm saying *nervous laughter*
*earpiece*
Oh... But SURely multiple people haven't been killed I mean- this protest is SENSELESS, there is no reason-
*earpiece*
...oh ...   Back to you in the studio Tim.

Tim- well... um... You know what's American?? Baseball! And guess what? Because of these crazy spontaneous protests, our BASEBALL IS BEING CANCELLED. Hear that? CANCELLED. It's being closed the public. For the first time ever! If any thing is umamerican it's these protests that are stopping our baseball!

Susie- I just hope these protesters soon see the light. I mean they are defiantly overreacting completely. And I mean, I'm NOT a racist! I support blacks! I know a lot! See, I know about MLK. You know what MLK would say in this situation? He didn't like violence! You protesters are going against the ways of MLK. And you say I'M racist.

Tim- That's so true Suzie, so true. As a white person i'm sure I understand systematic oppression better than anyone, and I would know that the protesting and rock throwing is incredibly uncalled for. I'm praying for all of it to end.