Ethics in Journalism

The shooting of Michael Brown has started the Ferguson unrest which resulted in more than a thousand people of colour being killed by police since August 2014. The way the American media has responded has been absolutely shocking. Almost all of the major American news companies say that institutional racism in America has died the moment that Barack Obama took office as president, without realising that he is the president and not an ordinary person of colour trying to stay alive in a world dominated by predominantly white males. People of colour in America have struggled for their lives and their respect for over 300 years now and the news companies think that 300+ years of abuse, murder and enslavement will be all forgotten because there is a black president. 

The more right wing/conservative news companies such as Fox News will always blame the victim just because the shooter was a cop, therefore he had to be right. Fox News who has been well known for being against the Obama administration has blamed the killings on the victims countless times, for example with the death of Michael Brown they labelled him a "Thug" and "Thief" shortly after the CCTV footage from the store in front of which Micheal Brown was killed. In the footage Brown can be seen stealing, which was completely irrelevant to the situation as a policeman shouldn't react to a petty thief by killing him. 

Most of the news companies reacted the same way although didn't use the word "thug" so they didn't add as much salt to the wound. Another case of the media totally misunderstanding the situation was when two cops in New York were killed by some vigilantes. Fox News and others called out the mayor for being "Anti-cop" among other things.

The Orlando shooting that took place at the club "Pulse" was having a Latino night and almost all of the identified victims were of Latino origin. In such a tragic event the media has yet again forgotten people of colour and are making it a Muslim vs America issue instead of Bigots vs the LGBTQ+ community. The shooters parents are Muslim although the shooter himself was not and still the media decides to paint his as such.

As a white person I of course don't understand and will never feel what people of colour all over America have to experience in their everyday lives. But one thing that I do understand is that the media is doing a horrible job of portraying events like how they actually happened, and they do a worse job when people of colour are somehow involved. When a newspaper releases a story about a white criminal they include a photo of them smiling with their family and start to list all the good things they did. But when the criminal is a POC its a mugshot with all the bad things the person did, no matter how insignificant it was.

Digital Graphics Evaluation

The colour scheme used for my design was quite bold, the colours jump out at you and are very visible and vibrant while still keeping in with the theme. The colour palette was quite limited because I didn't want to over do it without and need for it. I chose the colours to fit in with the theme and with what they were supposed to represent, the red baron was red, the tank was a normal army green colour, etc. I think that the colours I used were successful because it all came out really well and it all fits together and works together

I didn't use any text in my design as I didn't think that it was necessary

I think that my design reflects the theme very well as it showcases some of the more memorable things from world war 1, such as the Red Baron, the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand and the Mk IV Tank. The imaginary is quite abstract as none of the things pictured would be in the same place/same scale.All of the images used in this design are photographs and have been altered in some way or another. If I had the room or ideas for more memorable items from the first world war, then yes there would be more images used in the design.

For all of the editing I used Photoshop. All of the images have had their original backgrounds removed using a very precise eraser tool instead of the magnetic lasso tool or the magic wand tool as they tend to leave a lot of pixel marks on images with lower resolution, so I used a very small eraser to very carefully erase the backgrounds from the images. The images would later be re scaled and put into their positions. Then the threshold of the image would be changed to take away from of the detail and make it a more blobby sort of shape. Then I would use the dissolve option mixed in with a coloured backgrounds for all the images to give them this very colourful look.

I'm really happy with how this image came out and I think the most successful thing about it is the editing. A lot of time and work went into all the editing and I think it all payed off very well.

Conglomerate Presentation

Viacom from Louise Reed