March on Washington

Previous to this class I had never looked into the March on Washington really. I was aware that it had happened, but I never looked into the coverage behind it. I was shocked and not impressed with what I learned about how Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Had A Dream Speech" wasn't properly covered by the media. Having been raised in the generation that I was raised in it seems unreal to me how something like that just wasn't covered. Everything nowadays is covered, both the great and the awful. It's only been 50 years since it occurred, yet so much in journalism has changed. Here's a nice little read that agrees with the generally unanimous opinion of its poor coverage: http://madamenoire.com/295404/poor-journalism-i-have-a-dream-speech-completely-ignored-by-the-washington-post-newspaper-back-in-1963/

Something I found interesting from the student presentation was the difference between the coverage that print journalism did compared to broadcast. Journalists who covered the March on Washington in print were a lot more able to pick and choose what they wanted to include in their pieces than broadcast journalists who were capturing the events with video and radio, such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. They weren't able to exaggerate the story because they facts were able to be seen by viewers firsthand instead of just reading about it after the fact. It held them to keeping the coverage truthful and accurate, which was a very good thing considering all of the bias that was going into covering the event in other methods.

I really liked the advice that was given in the presentation, which was to pop our media bubbles. We should be exposing ourselves to a variety of media sources to avoid getting a close minded single viewpoint from just one source. This concept is familiar not only in journalism, but in business, and other areas. Here's an example of a breakdown of how businesses use different medias: http://www.whiteglovesocialmedia.com/infographic-how-small-businesses-use-a-variety-of-effective-social-media-marketing-strategies/