Communications II Learning Reflection

      I have learned a lot during my time in Communications class. At first before I even entered into this class I didn’t even know what diversity meant, it means what makes a person unique, by their skin colour, religion, personal style etc.  We also learned about bias, how you hear only one side of someone's point of view. Ethics was another term I wasn’t familiar with before entering this course. I heard of the term before but I didn’t know what it actually was in great detail, which is, is it unethical to accept a gift from your employer, so you faced with decisions that are difficult to decide upon but we are faced with them in our everyday lives.

  I have learned a lot about the media as well and how it can twist people’s minds in such a way that it is some form of brainwashing, but not all media is bad. I love watching CTV and Steve Murphy because he is not biased, and he ask questions in a respectful manner. He incorporates what we have learned in this program and puts them into action in his interviews and when he is anchoring, and that is what I admire about him and the CTV organization. When I graduate I plan on putting all of the things I have learned from this course into action, diversity for example. If I was hired to be a reporter and hope to be someday, I will try and incorporate diversity into my work because now I know how important it is in our community. Ethics, we are faced with decisions everyday but I will do my best to not make the wrong decision. Bias I think is one of the most important ones of them all because if you are doing a story, lets say and you are being bias towards it then you will begin to lose respect from your co-workers and that’s not something that I want to encounter when I am in the workplace. I want to be respected. Respect is something that you earn and throughout this course I feel that I have worked very hard to earn my respect from my colleagues and from my faculty and I want to maintain that reputation, and do my very best to keep striving for success.

The Falling Man

Last week our class watched a documentary called “The Falling Man”. It was about a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Centre, during the September 11 attacks in New York City, and aboutRichard Drew’s photograph, and the  controversy surrounding it. The identity of the man is still unknown. Because of the number of jumpers (200) that day, identifying the man wasn’t going to be an easy task.  So the media searched high and low for the falling man and they came across who they thought was the man’s family. The family of the alleged falling man, Norberto Hernandez, went through at least twelve photos until one caught their eye. It turned out Norberto Hernandez was not the falling man.

Five years after the attacks, the media came across another photo, of a man by the name of Jonathan Birley, who was an employee of the Windows of the World restaurant.  He was identified  by his boss, Chef Michael Lomonaco as the falling man.

Photographer Richard Drew dealt with a lot of controversy after taking this photo. In at least two cases newspaper stories using the image have attracted criticism from readers who found the image disturbing.

Personally I think the film told a great story and followed every single RTNDA code of ethics. One of the things that I disagreed with was when the media was saying that when the people jumped out of the buildings it was because they wanted to commit suicide. That was not the case they had nowhere else to go, it was either burn up into flames or jump. In my opinion, when the people jumped to their deaths it was the only time that they felt free after the plans crashed into the buildings. For the family members of the victims when they look at those pictures of their loved ones it is the last memory that they have of them, and when they said that in the film it was very emotional and a powerful statement.If you asked me what I would do in that that situation, the truth is I don’t know.Until I am actually in that situation I would just never know.