Your final grades have been submitted and you should be able to view them on the student link.

I just wanted to thank you all again for making this an enjoyable summer semester. I hope, in turn, you were able to get something out of the class and will now look at the relationship between the media and politics through a slightly different lens.

Feel free to keep in touch and to continue using this blog. There are so many interesting stories around right now, and lots more to come. For instance, the latest on the GE-NewsCorp ‘deal‘. For those of us who have it linked to our RSS reader, we can easily tell if there are new posts.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Despite the President’s approval rating slowly dropping, this image is to be portrayed on the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone magazine:

The artist behind the image is Shepard Fairey, the same creator of the “Hope” image.

As it turns out, someone HAS produced a fake Kenyan Birth Certificate for President Obama. See it here.

The journalists are freed from North Korea after former President Bill Clinton visits Pyongyang to negotiate with the Kim Jong Il.

I am assuming the negotiation was probably more intense than this picture shows

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/05/nkorea.journalists/index.html

An interesting article on the reasons why people would pay for news and the reasons why people would not pay for news. This article was really relevant to what we’ve been discussing in class and I found all of the points to be convincing and true for both sides. The results of the study are included in the article. If you’re interested take a look:

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/What-Consumers-Tell-Us-About-Paying-for-News-Online-858.htm

Newsweek criticizes Obama for not standing up to African despots during his Africa trip.  Obviously, Obama has his own strategy such as intentionally visiting Ghana which is an example of good governance and democracy in Africa nonetheless this is an example of the media being a watchdog on the Obama Administration.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/210674/page/1

“Quality journalism is not cheap”

Rupert Murdoch announced that all of his news websites, including the New York Post and the Times of London, will charge for content by the summer of 2010.

I am not sure but could this article be an example of Social Order according to Herbert Gans:

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14140365&source=hptextfeature

Mobile, Alabama

Despite a 10+% unemployment rate there is optimism because ThyssenKrupp is building a large steel plant that will bring 2,700 jobs to the region next year. Boeing, also expanding in the area.

In addition Forbes cites Mobile (and Huntsville) in its list of the ten cities best placed for recovery. There’s hope and progress in the face of economic woes.

This might be a easier way to get a few more tax dollars. But currently, unrealistic in the US.

OK. So Obama, reaffirmed his promise to the middle class for NO new taxes. But I am not convinced at least not in a few years. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council, said Sunday they could no longer guarantee the middle class will be spared a tax increase. These are economically minded people, they said this for a reason. Look we can’t fund healthcare and a MASSIVE debt without raising taxes or cutting A LOT of services. Which do you think is easier, realistically, thats right taxes. And even if you cut some programs its still not enough. And the rich can’t pay for it all either. The Bush tax cuts will expire soon, then theres talk of an tax increase on top of that then plus state taxes…it could be that the rich in America could pay 50+% in income taxes which rich or not rich is a lot of money. The rich can’t pay for everything what are we going to do make them pay 90% income tax. Even at 50% I am sure that will drive many of them away to I don’t know Canada or somewhere else which actually means we lose money. My long rant is that the rich can’t pay for it all. This isn’t heaven or something, we just don’t have responsibility but tons of benefits but we need to be realistic. Hey, I don’t want to pay more taxes but how else are we going to pay for a bankrupt Social Security, bankrupt Medicare, uberexpensive universal healthcare (potentially), the nation-building of Afghanistan, an insane amount of debt (!), etc get the picture. The Middle Class has to eventually take more of the burden and the Obama economic team knows it. I am assuming Obama will not raise these taxes (if he does) unless he gets a second term for his own political security just because it will be very unpopular and plus we are in a pretty bad recession. Obama can’t be honest about this because the media is going to eat this up. Talk of taxes is taboo during a severe recession which could actually hurt the economy.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/03/obama.economy/index.html#

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/03/white-house-obama-committed-shielding-middle-class-tax-hike/