My answer for "what is 'watchdog' journalism"

So, as you guys may remember. There was a quiz a couple classes ago.
The question was:
             "What is 'watchdog' journalism, and what are some reasons why it has been declining?

I didn't do the reading. I thought about BSing my way through it like...oh...40 percent of you probably did. But instead of guessing i thought what the hell. Here is my answer, verbatim.

        Watchdog journalism is journalism about the breeding and raising of watchdogs. It follow's the lives and hardships of German Sheperds, bulldogs, and, the less popular, chiwawa.
       In recent years there has been a growing discontentment amoung the dogs as to how they are treated within the Journalistic community. Barky, a spokesdog for the RWDWD (Rot-Weiler Division of Watch Dogs), has been particularly harsh on the journalism community, to the point of biting 3 writers.
        Writers, now wary of the reaction of watchdogs, have been slowly but surely moving away from this type of reporting. This is why it is in Decline. 


Professor Adler gave me a 0/1. Perhaps it is his bias against the RWDWD that fueled his unjust rage, or perhaps it is his personal vandetta against the mispelling of the word 'Chiuaua.'  In either case I ask, where is the unbiased evaluation professor!? IS THERE SUCH THING AS OBJECTIVE GRADING!?

Censorship of the Internet in China

Out of the top 100 sites on the internet, 12 are currently blocked in the mainland of China (wiki). Blocked sites include imdb, youtube, twitter, blogspot (i think i've heard of this one), facebook, imageshack, and various others that would not be appropriate to name to all you frumsters out there, even though im sure most would never dream of exploring such vulgar sites. Additionally, such searches as "democracy" on google pull up a censored page. How they censor is a whole other issue. You don't end up at a page declaring THIS WEBSITE IS CENSORED BY THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA. No, instead you are brought to a "this website does not exsist" or "your search query did not match any records."  Because of such techniques, it is very possible that many people living in china do not even know that content is being censored. Though I suspect that the knowledge of the censorship is making its way through the population, and has been for years, since i havn't looked into it though, this is purely speculative.

First Blog

So as I write this first blog post I am thinking of what I can write about that related to our last class. We talked about the idea of an "objective media" and the clearly related topic of a biased news story. But for someone who, to put it lightly, is lacking in knowledge of current events, how am I to detect whether a story is biased or not.

I found an article that was helpful for this, the link is below. I hope this suffices as my first blog.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=121