Back In Action: Jumping In

So this is probably only going to be some quick thoughts as I have a job interview in the morning (hopefully leading to a job finally) but here on some recent thoughts on people and my relationship with them.

Lets start with this quote: "What man is a man, who does not make the world a better place?"

I am noticing that my feelings and relationships with people are much less dependent on who particular people are (character, personality etc.) and more dependent on who they want to be; this is only sufficient insofar as they are moving towards and capable of becoming who they wish to be. This may not be a typical way of thinking, but I do think the world could use more of it. It has allowed me to be a less judgmental and more loving person.

I do not know the actual quote but someone once said something along the lines of "I was so consumed with trying to do the right thing, that I forgot what the right thing was." I think that extends fully into the realm of the way we treat people. It is easy to get caught up in wanting to love people but it is equally easy to fall into the temptation of looking for people who are "worthy" of our love. This leads us to become blind to the people who actually NEED our love.

Most of my above thoughts stem from my time contemplating my desire(?) to go to law school which I think is a result of my feelings on loving the people of this world. I do not wish to sit idly by and read about the injustice of this world while swelling with anger (even if it is righteous anger, not sure if it is necessarily). I feel that I have been given the ability and the heart to make a difference and maybe even change people's views on justice and its execution. In the end maybe that's what this post is all about. I want to go to law school and I want to fight the evil deeds of evil people. I have a hero complex, what of it? I don't have the heart to fight physically, but I have the passion to fight to the death for the love of the people of this world.

God's Great Earth

This is just a few videos just show how awesome our earth and things animals that inhabit it are. Simply, amazing.

Why Wash

I just realized that I have not yet related why I chose to call my blog the wash. So I am going to try to get through this quickly and concisely. First off, everyone knows and will not argue that regular washing of almost anything is effective at showing it's true nature. A car's color is most vivid when clean, a mirror is most reflective when free of gunk and junk, etc. My meaning and purpose in creating this blog - though it was for a class - was to be able to take some free time to discourse of things which confuse me or in the very least consume my thoughts. So I will now do my best - being free from class obligations - to relate thoughts and ideas through this blog for the enjoyment of you. Thank you for joining me as I attempt to wash through the muddles of my brain and the things I see around me.

Blog 3: Interview of a Professional

Tim Treager has worked as the editor at the Whittier Daily News since 2007. Before that his work experience had ranged from shooting pictures of the Dodgers and Los Angeles Raiders for a sports page in Burbank, to covering the 1992 L.A. riots from the site of Rodney King's beating. When Sonny Bono, the famous solo career singer and more famous for his duet career with Cher, skied into a tree at the Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Tim Treager was the first person to break the story and was on Larry King the next morning. In summation, his career as a journalist has been variant and exciting. When I asked him what his philosophy of journalism was he quickly responded that it was "always changing," but the constants for him were his beliefs that what he did as a journalist always came back to a journalists role as "the fourth estate," and the "gatekeepers." Treager says that what is important to realize about journalists now is that they need to become producers of "value." What he means by this is that when roughly fifteen years ago newspapers began to publish stories online people still paid for the printed paper. Now almost all content can be reached online for free, causing papers to loose money and jobs to suddenly disappear. "If it's free, it has no value," Treager says, "we need to shut down the website today, and bring it back online tomorrow and charge a monthly fee for it." Treager realizes that once you put a price on something, it has value, its worth something. Noting interestingly, Treager said, "cities with no news papers have less volunteers." This fact shows that newspapers have an obligation to make changes so that they can avoid continual job cuts, as well as a need to be aware of their impact on their communities.

This leads me to my next point, Tim Treager's views on religion in his experience as a journalist. Treager says that he is not what he would call a religious person per se, but that regardless of his feelings towards the subject he knows it is important. This is because of his audience. Whittier, California is a city founded by Quakers and comprised still of many Christians and other religious sects. It reminds me of the joke about a Starbucks being on every corner, in Whittier, their is a church on almost every corner. Their is a Masonic Temple next to the Daily News headquarters even. Now to digress, due to the overwhelming amount of religious - mainly Christian - readers of the Daily News, they run a weekly page devoted entirely to religion. You have to "play to your audience," Treager tells me. And since he knows the affect the newspaper can have on the involvement of it's community in service, Treager says that it is one of his main goals to constantly be "beefing up" the religion page in order give them the coverage they deserve.

Journo Under Siege: Where is the Justice

I am living in a world where the boundaries of justice and freedom seem to blur with an ease which reminiscent of the silver screen's ability to blur boundaries of the possible and impossible. Journalists are a unique breed of people; they are the citizens who speak for truth, fight for it, and reveal its amorphous face to the world. It seems however, that people do not always appreciate the lengths journalists go to, to do their job and the fact that at the end of the day journalists are still people who have moral boundaries and ethics to uphold.

In October of 2001, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper were asked to present evidence in the court case investigating the revelation of Valerie Plame as a member of the CIA. In order to present the evidence, both journalists would have to retract promises of confidence given to their sources and reveal those sources names. "Courts should not be able to 'just willy nilly extract information from reporters,' U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton of Washington told an American Bar Association panel on proposed shield legislation" (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). The mentioned shield legislation is a bill that states the rights journalists have to withhold information they have sworn to privacy in court. The bills leave room for instances in which national security or public safety is at risk but in general would have given protection to Journalists like Miller and Cooper. As a result of their initial refusal, both Miller and Cooper declined the demands of the court, an action that led to their being held in contempt. Miller eventually gave in to the court's wishes thanks to a discussion between his lawyer and his source’s that led to an agreement of disclosure. However, with no such agreement given to her, Miller refused to give the name of her source and was sentenced to 18 months in jail on July 6 2005 after months of appeals.

This is not the only instance of a journalist being oppressed by courts though, Claire O'Brien is a reporter in Kansas who in regards to her situation with the court said, "I feel profoundly betrayed. I have been prepared to take one of the most difficult steps a citizen can take and I haven't been given the dignity of representation ... to facilitate my choice, I have been told that I have to betray my sources in order to get legal help" (www.firstamendmentcenter.org). However, this case seems to fall all the other side of the issues because, "prosecutors want her notes from a jailhouse interview with a suspect in a shooting that left one man dead and another wounded. They also want to know the identity of confidential sources who alluded that the suspect might be in danger" (www.firstamendmentcenter.org).

While the argument can be made that it is the safety of the people the court pursues, the journalist pursues the safety of their source and in so doing practices ethical journalism. Aren’t ethical journalists what we desire?

Freedom of Press Demands Responsible Readers

Many people believe that there are many images, stories, videos – basically all forms of media and news are considered – that should not be shown to the general public or even made available for there use because of their violent or disturbing content. Examples which come to mind immediately are images of people jumping out of the twin towers on September 11,2001 when they were bombed; the people decided that suicide from the fall was better than death from the fires. Other examples include photos of students from the Virginia Tech shooting being carried injured out of buildings. These images are just examples of the content available to those who read the news and surf the Internet. There are a good deal of people find them to be considered as over the top and too graphic for public viewing due to those peoples assumptions and opinions that such images are not beneficial to the public in the retelling of such already unfortunate and distressing stories. There are others who hold the opinion which I hold; the public has a right to know the truth, and be informed in a way that paints no false images or expectations.

In many situations the truth, when revealed through photography and video and other media, can be alarmingly terrifying. People have tend to live in their own little world and live a self sheltered light in my experience and as a result of this, they feel betrayed by humankind when they are presented with a story that shows just how depraved the human soul can become. And while it is not necessarily always the case that people are self sheltered – some people are sheltered due to outside influence – the sheltering itself is something that I see as hugely problematic. In a world where a man can gain entry to a plane with a bomb in his underpants, can we afford to think that real people are not forced to decide weather to jump out of a burning building to their death or stay and lose their life in the fires blazing around them? Surely, no one will disagree that both the bombing of the World Trade Center and the attempted underwear bombing are not both acts of depraved humankind. Religion aside, to commit such acts shows a complete lack of respect for human life. The depraved acts of the world’s most misguided, lost, and insane must be made known to the public so that the public can act and live appropriately in light of the world they live.

So, what does it look like for people to view and treat these images correctly? Firstly, people must be aware of their maturity and if they are not mature enough to understand the purpose of such images and stories, it may be best that they be made aware by others who are able to explain them in ways which make it easier to take but not less powerful in meaning. The consumption of news requires reader maturity.

Thoughts on Christian Evangelizing through Merchandise

I see a mixture of both good and bad things stemming from current and possible future examples of Christian advertising and merchandising.  This is because as Stephen Bates wrote in a December 12, 2002 issue of the Weekly Standard, “The new godly merchandise, I figured, represented the quarantine at work. Instead of protesting obscene gangsta rap, Christians were listening to Gospel Gangstaz and Lil' Raskull. Instead of trying to transfigure the mass culture, they were building a cloistered subculture, a gated community of faith. Jesus' Great Commission--"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations"--was giving way to the Great Escape.” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/988ovwyu.asp) I could not agree more with Bates’ opinion.  There is far too much attention by evangelicals to things, which are trivial, and ineffective towards the commission of Jesus that they cannot afford to continue fooling themselves into thinking they are doing a great service.  Erasmus’ used Folly to write an entire essay explaining how foolish Christians were by playing into the hands of the modern world around them, and he could easily do the same thing today.  Christians print a t-shirt that says Jesus is my homeboy and another that has the “John Deer” logo switched to say Jesus Saves, then go home at the end of the day, and say to themselves, well done.  This is horrific! How can the honestly say that they are producing anything other than an elementary level witticism that serves only to heighten the level of jokes aimed at the only religion bringing the light of truth into a dark and deceptive world?  Christian merchandise does the same thing that Christian Music, Entertainment, and periodicals do; they are doing a pathetic and lazy job of merely reflecting an uninteresting and unnecessary product that can be found produced better and more intelligently with originality in secular culture.  If the purpose of Christianity is to spread across the lands and become fishers of men who, in a unified church seek to love one another and lift each other up towards the great end of an eternal communion with God, should not Christians produce things that cater to that end?  If that is indeed the biggest problem or at least the base problem facing Christian merchandising and media at large, the answer is then simple, if only in theory.  Christian merchandise needs to aim to be more original and produce high quality products that do two possible things at least.  The first and more basic goal should be that Christian merchandise seeks to be a creation that enables Christians and non-Christians alike to use them for simple purposes.  Whether it is a calendar or a note pad, creating simple every-day object seems to bridge the gap between customers.  The second goal should be for Christian merchandise to target specific consumer groups.  If they want to reach Christians for evangelical purpose, create original products for that end.  If they want to reach non-Christians with a positive loving message, do so originally and with intention.