Archive for March 24th, 2008
Universal Music Group Removes Bands Songs Due To “Violence”
A recent article by Washington Square News dealt with a controversial issue, but mainly buried the lead while editorializing between quotes. The content was there, but just ignored. The lead singer (Pearl Abegg) of Be Your Own Pet provided some great answers in her interview; Abegg touched on quite a controversy in her interview, but instead of the lead reading “Universal Music Group censors Be Your Own Pet US album release due to “the violent nature of the songs” the lead ends up being a fan boy charecter trait observation of the band’s lead signer.
The lead reads ” Why does Jemina Pearl seem so much younger than her 20 years? It all comes back to that giggle.” It sounds like the journalist is more concerned with displaying his crush on Abegg to the world in hopes of her acceptance rather than reporting on a newsworthy controversy. After two paragraphs of describing the lead singer, then after hyping up the new album, only then does the journalist finally include the quote about the album’s censorship. Then at this point the journalist doesn’t comment on it. Though the next few quotes from Abegg speak for themselves, it seems the journalist is too fixated on this (very attractive) girl’s personality rather than doing his job of reporting what matters to the public, and corporate media censorship is certainly an issue that needs addressing.
Apple Might Give Infinite Music For One Price
A recent Yahoo News article discussed the possibility of Apple allowing customers the ability to access the entire iTunes online store’s musical library for one flat fee or a smaller monthly fee for ipod and iphone users willing to pay a premium. This interesting proposition would set Apple to bridge the gap between the two types of online musical sales companies; one being single songs/single album sales, and the second being monthly fee infinite use dealers. Such an act would certainly be revolutionary as well as semi-monopolisitc, yet this news article does not touch on this.
The article is quite short. The article said Apple was not available for immediate comment. In this case it might has been a better decision to wait for a comment (as long as that would not be weeks or months from now) instead of printing a114 word, 4 paragraph, uninformative piece that merely leaves the audience in question. The article seems more like a vague press release, a quick advertisement for Apple, instead of a piece of informative journalism.
When do we say the R word?
Bear Stearns has folded. The Fed is cutting interests rates. The number of unsold houses on the market is steadily climbing.
At what point should the media dub the current economic slump a recession? Do we sit back and wait until Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, says the R word? Or do we solicit a label from financial analysts?
Bloomberg has gone forth and christened the current climate indicative of a recession.
What if the self fulfilling prophecy is true? Dan Ariely of the MIT economics department writes that talking about the possibility of a recession could very well lead to one. He suggests that we just talk about sex instead. I think his logic is sound up until that point. More often than not, the reporting of news will cause other news to happen.
