Tré's Media Blog

The way our president attacks our media as "fake news" is a total disgrace. That being said, he is not completely wrong. The news should probably be a bit more careful, and certainly needs to work on removing bias, but they are not spouting off completely false stories or having made up sources anything like what Donald Trump seems to think. The biggest and most blatant example is the Russian election meddling. The evidence is there. It is all clear as day. He has numerous security and intelligence officials telling him repeatedly the extent of the problem, and he almost certainly gets shown even more of the issue than we see, and yet he regularly denies, or at least muddies the clarity of the entire issue. This is inexcusable lying, or complete incompetence, and I suspect the former. All of his attacks are constantly damaging the  ability for the American public to get and recognize the truth. Should people be more wary about their news, and check sources? Yes. But all Trump

I get most of my local news from listening to Oregon Public Broadcasting on the radio. It isn't the most "local" news I can get, but it works. I greatly appreciate having such constant access to it, though I tend to pay more attention to and care more for national news in NPR segments. OPB and NPR in general are probably my most trusted news source, as I have had most of the things I have learned from them check out under inspection. My second largest source of local news would definitely be friends and family. Most of the time I hear stuff from them I check it out myself though, but it has been pretty solid so far. I donate 10 dollars a month to OPB. It is the closest I get to paying for any news. It is very much worth it to me for how reliant I am on their reporting in my daily routine. On a scale of 1-5, 5 being most informed, I would say I am about a 2.5 on local subjects, and a 4 on national news. National news is much more interesting to me, and always feels more

Wikileaks is very close to something I can get behind. The concept is solid. I can get behind releasing classified information, even classified information that people don't want released, as long as it is done very carefully. I do not feel that the people at Wikileaks have been nearly careful enough. They have caused numerous problems with their releases, and endangered countless lives. One of the best examples I know of is the release of personal information about whereabouts, contact information, and political dealings of millions of Turkish citizens literally during the week of a coup. Wikileaks put all of their lives and livelihoods at risk (Ellis). Even Edward Snowden, who I respect much more on this topic than Wikileaks, and who I believe has tried much harder to be careful with then where and how things get released, has made mistakes. Wikileaks just comes off as near lazy by comparison, and that has had terrible consequences. But, like I said, I agree with the spirit of Wi

I honestly felt that the "RiP! A Remix Manifesto" video was pretty bad. It is outdated, entitled, and factually inaccurate. To begin, the DRM issue is no longer relevant. It is not really a thing anymore. It isn't a major point, but it is there. Secondly the entire video comes across as entitled. Artists have a right to make money off of their work, and that is made much more challenging without legitimate copyright law enforcement. Do I feel copyright law has gotten out of hand? Sure. But even their main star character, Girl Talk, goes way too far in my mind. He does not, and should not have the right to just remix those songs and profit from it. It is not fair to those who own the copyrights. As much as he is remixing those songs, they are still distinctly recognizable as direct clips of other people's work, and those people need to be credited for the effort that they put into their own work. He deserves every fine thrown at him. The people in this video make vague

Today I am going to be taking a good hard look at an advertisement campaign put out by the GOP known as the Mainstream Media Accountability Survey. It has been around since early 2017, but recently I have been seeing a version of it advertised during YouTube videos, and so it was brought back to my attention.. Despite how it might sound, this is most certainly an advertisement campaign, not a legitimate attempt at a survey. It is a poll consisting of twenty-five questions, many of which rank in the most biased, poorly worded, and leading questions I have ever read. I have seen a few different versions of it, which I will link to at the bottom, but all of them, as you might have guessed, mostly relate to mainstream media. Some of my favorite questions include "On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans? (Select as many that apply)", "Do you believe that thee media unfairly reported on Trump's executive order temporarily rest

Lately I had been seeing an add to put a measure on the Oregon ballot to remove the state's sanctuary status. This ad has been very confusing to me. All it says is that Oregon is currently a sanctuary state, and that "you" can help stop that my signing a petition to get the measure on the ballot. This doesn't seem very effective to me. I feel like the people who would care enough to sign such a thing already know about it, and by not explaining why they consider it to be a bad thing, they don't seem to be trying to make anyone new care. It just feels very redundant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuXWuqG3Ns8 So it isn't exactly new, but I want to talk about that Superbowl Tide ad. I think it is brilliant. It has integrated the idea of clean clothes as a whole throughout the entirety of advertising with Tide. It is funny, it makes you think, and now every time you see a commercial (for a least a little while after watching it) you are going to wonder if th