Factual Storytelling Exercise

Do you believe love at first sight? No matter what your answer is, there is one person who becomes an adherent because of his own experience. His name is ZhuGuang.

He came to Australia Nudgee international college in 2009 as an international student to study language firstly. Life was rushing, fulfilling and interesting after he arrived in Brisbane. 20 days past, he became much more familiar with his surroundings and got acquainted with many friends. Everything was proceeding in an orderly fashion, until that girl appeared.

27^th of April was just as normal as everyday, Guang went to school as usual. However, Guang was running late to school because of the crowded traffic ahead of him. By the time he got to school, class had already begun as he hurried to his class. All students were already in class, suddenly, his attention was drawn by a girl, and she was wearing a white T-shirt with black pants. She was so obvious to be noticed in that void area, however time was pushing him. He had no time to stop but rush to class. This was the first time he didn’t attend class on time, teachers were so surprised with his late attendance.

After sitting-down with an embarrassing face, he couldn’t stop thinking that unknown girl, ‘Maybe she is a new student.’ He thought to himself. Half an hour past, and he still couldn’t focus on his books, that girl forcibly occupied his whole brain just like a demo. The “picture” of her was freeze-framed and kept spinning in his head.

Suddenly, the door was opened with two teachers came in for introducing a new student. All of Guang’s nerves became electrified, and could not control his shaky hands. He didn’t know what was wrong with him but just so weird and abnormal. The girl was genteelly walking in and every movement of her was slowed by Guang. Shoes, pants, T-shirts and that was her! That was the same girl that he couldn’t control himself to stop thinking about. He felt that there was one cleaner around and sucked all air up in one second. He nearly stifled for such sudden. When he looked her eyes, he was fascinated by one kind of mystical power. In that moment, he knew that this is the girl of his life. He was shot by cupid and then he directly told his best friend who is in front of him, ‘This is the one I will marry with.’

After a few conversations with that girl, he was so surprised for his sight. ‘How can she be so perfect? Thank God!’ This is the girl of his dreams.

He started to send that girl before and after school everyday. He said to his friends that he will continue do this until she wants to accept him. The only thing his friends wanted to do was taking him to see doctors. They knew him a lot, this was not his style. He used to be gentle, dispassionate and implicit. Time goes by, he proved himself that no matter what had happened he will perform his promise. That girl accepted him on the thirty day. On that day, Guang was sick and absented the school. His friends decided to visit him when the school finished. When they walked out of the school together, they were stricken dumb with amazement. Guang was standing there for waiting with a big jacket. When the girl came out of the building, she was so moved and accepted him.

After half year, she rode his diary inadvertently and then she cried. There is one sentence on the top of the notebook, “From now on, I will expect nothing, and just take what I get, meeting you is fate and falling in love with you was beyond my control, I will love and protect you forever.”

That girl is me. Up to now, we have been together for three years and we will keep going with happiness.

This is a one-sight love story of ZhuGuang. So, will you change your opinion after reading it? Actually, it is really doesn’t matter what your answers are. The emphasis is to find your own love and keep that lovely memory deep in your heart. Time goes by, your life maybe starts to be occupied by many annoying daily routines and you start to forget how romantic he is. Just pick up your amatory memory and turn back your head, you will suddenly find that you are the most fortunate woman in the world.

Lecture 8

This lecture emphasized on ethics, which is a really vague but important word. So how do we know what is ethical? The answer is ethical theories.

Ethical theories include deontology, consequentialism and virtue.

Deontology is rules, principle and duties. You follow the roles and then every step is right. Consequentialism focus on the end, so no matter what your process is. The end may justify the means and it’s getting a “good” or “right” outcome that matters. Virtue ethics is goodness which comes from good habits of character, for instance, courage, justice, temperance and prudence.

The video of news ethic:

                     http://v.ku6.com/show/PSZlCIb2v1QU837s.html

COURAGE is the mean between RASHNESS and COWARDICE.

JUSTICE is the mean between the IN-JUSTICE of overzealous and the excessive law and the INJUSTICE of LAWLESSNESS.

Lecture 7

The content of this lecture goes around Public Media which is much different with commercial media, so let’s define it firstly.

In general, media whose mission is to serve or engage a public. Public media include traditional publicly-funded broadcasters and networks … as well as public uses of new platforms and distribution mechanisms, such as the Internet, podcasting, blogging. Increasingly the term "public media" is less associated with taxpayer supported media; it may be for profit so long as its ultimate purpose is to serve the public and not to turn a profit.

WGBH Educational Foundation Conference

Open Content and Public Broadcasting (19-21 September 2006)

Therefore, the point of public media is to provide non-profit productions for public, it can make money but this money will still serve for human. From the definition, it is easy to find the role of public media which is supporting of public and democratic process. The value of public media is not money but “Public Value” (Embedding a ‘public service ethos’; public consultation).There are many organizations belong to public media in the world. The image below reveals the Public Media in every country.

                       http://tvbrasil.org.br/tvspublicas/

There are some well-know public media which we should remember:

Australia -- ABC, SBS                 Singapore – MediaCorp                 

China – RTHK                              Canada – CBC, RCI

Japan -- NHK                                India – AIR, Prasar Bharati, DDI

Korea – KBS, MBC, EBS           Germany – DR, ARTE, ZDF

America –NPR                              New Zealand – TVNZ

England -- BBC, Channel 4          Thailand -- NBT

The functions of public media are obvious from normal days. Through watching public function, you will have nation building, national heritage, national identity and national conversations. Commercialization of public media is in order to make money and put it back into programs, so it is not real profit and it is still not same with commercial media.

“It is such a special vehicle for voices to be heard … [for] visions and viewpoints … ignored by commercial media.”                                                    

                                                                                                               Robert Richter

                   http://beyondthebox.org/vol.23/BTBSF04_1.html

The reason why Robert said this is the style of public media. It is serious, broadsheet style, importance over interest and considered, not quick. However, some people maybe feel opposite for boring, elitist, limited interest, poorly presented and out of touch. Public media has some challenges for producing quality, making themselves relevant, engaging with the democratic process.

That is all about this lecture, the public media. The link below is a really valuable article of Chinese public media. (This article is in Chinese but still need to keep)

              http://news.163.com/11/0506/08/73C0OE4000014AED.html

Lecture 6

The centre of this lecture is commercial media. Its name obviously presents the most important feature which is profit. However, we won’t stay surface after this deep-analyzing lecture.

As the word I wrote above, commercial media must has connection with profit. But how can this kind of media grabs money? The answer is advertisers. “Advertisers are the real customers of a commercial media organization, not its readers, viewers or listeners.” So every commercial media will pay attention on attracting more and more audiences’ eyeballs, and then they will use audience rating as bait to fish. In this way, those “delicious fat fish” (advertisers) will quickly get hooked. Commercial media is profit-driven media production which survives or fails on business success and its business is generating ‘audiences’.

The Australian major players of commercial media are news limited, APN, channel ten, Southern Cross, ‘yes’ optus and austral. The form of them is subscription, sponsored and subsidized. The function of those media is commercial, propaganda and social.

Commercial media is all round profit, so the content of news and programs will become more and more corrupt. Those companies want to catch everyone’s eyes, so what they want to do is not only what they should do, like truly news and reflect common people’s voice, but also some ‘special” stories. Those stories always cover super stars and use slapstick to attract people’s attention. However, those kinds of news have already violated the commercial media’s role.

The commercial media’s role in democratic society should be remembered:

  1. a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives  them meaning;

  2. a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism;

  3. the projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society;

  4. the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society;

  5. full access to the day’s intelligence.

“There was a time, not so long ago, when running a media company - be it one that specialized in newspapers, in radio, in television, or in all three - was a pretty simple job. Keep the costs within bounds, use your clout to ensure that governments didn't permit too much competition, make sure your content delivered audiences of a quality and in a quantity that your advertisers expected, and the money rolled in.”  (Jonathon Holmes “Media Watch” 2011)

Audience rating is the most important element in commercial media, so every company will try their best to improve it. In old time, rating is easy to ‘improve’, that is because we didn’t have an accurate way to measure it actually. However, nowadays the evidence is in the number of clicks that each story attracts. In this way, we can actually see how many clicks exist in every story. That is the challenge of commercial media.

an alternative view?

The future of commercial media is unseen but expecting. If it has better quality and greater content, people will actually pay for it for having high quality life.