Today in class, we focused on traditional and alternative media. Half of us were assigned the traditional media, and the other half was assigned the alternative media. I was assigned the alternative media, and in the first half of the class, I skimmed through three different websites; Mondoweiss, The electronic Intifada, and INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE. Any of them were the websites I have known, and I was curious to see what kind of information is on the page. As soon as I saw some headlines of the articles, I was shocked to find out that it differs so much from the traditional media. For almost the whole entire of my life, I have trusted big, mainstream media, and I always thought those to be the most accurate plausible media. Even in reports and essays, we are told that the mainstream tends to be more accurate, thus a better resource. Often, these websites I visited today are not included as the "plausible resource." However, in today's activity, I thought that this statement is wrong in a way and that these websites should be more valued in today's society.
In the second half of the class, we were paired up with a person from the other group. I was paired up with Asahi, and I was surprised by how different our assigned media were. As Mr. Paterson told us, I asked him if he knew some news I acquired from the alternative media, and see if there was a similar article on the traditional media as well. As a result, he knew none of the things I asked him. Also, I was terrified by the fact that traditional media has zero or only a few articles that pick up the tragedy that was caused by Israel, and that many don't even mention the fact that there are so many deaths and hardship that Palestinian people are going through. Throughout today's class, not only did I learned about Israel and Palestine, and what is happening there, I also learned how we cannot always trust the mainstream media, and sometimes, it is better to see what locals are saying from their point of view.
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