Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 3: Guided Reading Questions

1) According to the World Freedom Map, press freedom increased after World War II, and press freedom decreased after the start of the war on terror. 2) According to the author, World War 3.0 has already started. It will be conducted in cyberspace. 3) The author proposes two new formulas for measuring global press freedom: (1) war ends and freedom grows, war begins and freedom shrinks, and (2) the freedom in today’s digital media ecosystem minus the censorship. 4) The legal defense fund set up by the Open Society Foundation serves to help defend bloggers and website proprietors unfairly jailed around the world. 5) According to the author, teachers are not doing good enough at teaching the First Amendment because even though they deem it important, survey says that they still do not teach it. Also, the author was disappointed that teachers go against the First Amendment by harshly censoring student expression and use of social media. 6) There is a connection between social media use and the understanding and support of the First Amendment in that there has been a recent increase in the amount of students that agree that the First Amendment is just. 7) Nationally, students use social media more than teachers. 8) Television is not the number one news source for all forms of news, but rather forms of news are spread amongst different sources. 9) The sorts of news that people tend to consume from each of these sources are as follows: (a) mobile media - out and about news like restaurant tips and weather reports, (b) Internet - education and local business news, (c) local TV - weather, breaking news, and traffic, and (d) newspapers - overall civic news, especially government news. 10) Entertainment as well as political news interests me, and I always use either the TV or the web to access that information. 11) The term "fourth estate" comes from the three estates of the government - executive, legislative, and judicial branches - which means that journalism is considered the fourth branch of the government, or in other words, an essential element of our country. In my opinion, this is a good thing - good in that it displays our rights, particularly those found in the First Amendment, are one of the most important things in governing our country. Journalism has been doing a good job as the fourth estate - it has made it this far without (significant) limits, has it not? 12) The four C's from the business model the author believes will help support developing media are (1) content, (2) connectivity, (3) community, and (4) capital. 13) According to the author, our country's current media policies lag behind those of other nations like Great Britain. He explains his assessment through providing an example of this by saying that Americans are more knowledgable of cartoons than of the First Amendment. 14) According to the author, one thing that the federal government could do to help consumers have more acccess to journalism would be to ensure that consumers have universal broadband access. 15) The seven ways in which a public Media Technology Transformation Fund could produce results are: (1) technology transformation and tool adoption in existing public media organizations, (2) partnerships and megers through technology, (3) new technology testing labs, (4) media innovation projects/a "circle of champions, (5) senior fellowship fund for master teachers, (6) scholarship funds for tomorrow's media technologists, and (7) beyong the classroom - digital literacy. 16) 25% of Americans consume ethnic media. 17) Three advantages of Technology Testing Labs are: (1) they could become installed at schools and prepare future journalists for a high-tech world, (2) it can take the open source software emerging in the public media center, rewrite it and promote its adoption by public media which makes it easier for reporters to find stories, and (3) they would help speed adoption of open source software and the applications that run on it. 18) Public media must change by making it correspond with basic human rights and freedoms and by making it accessible to all.