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I always emphasize being honest in life. We should express our own ideas&thoughts clearly and accurately. Everyone could think about something in different ways and we all should be respectful to new and different ideas&thoughts.
AND:
I want to say something about our process essay topic's (Reality TV) arguments. We were supposed to read three arguments assigned from our instructors. And as I have chosen the first topic, Reality TV, I have read the arguments of Rushdie, Poniewozik and Peters again. However, to be honest, these arguments are really boring to read in my opinion. The topic is great and interesting: Reality TV is an actual subject to talk about. But they, especially Poniewozik's report, would have made me fall asleep. Although I love reading, I could not read them with any enjoyment.
The reason why I thought they are dead-boring could be their register and their context. They are cut out from some newspapers published in UK and in the USA. In each argument, the writer gives examples and talks about current events in his country. Poniewozik, for example, many times mentions the Reality TV programms which we, Turkish students, are not familiar with. (like "... focusing on convincing the Olsen twins ..." or "And like an overheated NASDAQ, ..." ) There are so many names and events which we have no idea about. We don't follow the American media. We don't know exactly what is going on in American channels or newspapers. I find it useful when there are some examples in the argument but if there are too much of them, the text could become boring and unenjoyable. But in our arguments, the writer doesn't seem to give examples to us but he seems to write to the people who know what's up nowadays in the USA. I don't know what American people talk about or experience in their daily life these days. However, our three authors write as if we (the undergraduates of Sabancı Uni.) know all the popular and famous stuff in their land.
Conclusion: For this time, the audience and the writer are totally from another universe. Although the subject is mutual and common, the context is the opposite.
As we took a look at some photos from wars or disasters in our last lesson and discussed what a journalist should do while taking photos from them, I recalled this added picture on the right side. As we know, after the attack to the synanogues, there were many dead and injured people at the scene. It was a sudden attack and therefore, help did not come immediately. A photographer named Alp Sime was living close to the bombed Synagogue (probably very close, maybe in the same street as the synagogue) and he was be able to go to the rubble, took pictures of the disaster. Pretty soon, the police came to the destroyed street and kept people away from the catastrophe. Therefore, Alp Sime was the only person who managed to take photos in the destroyed area. The photos are very brutal. They remind us how disgusting and "against-humanity" wars and frictions are. Here, a question occures to me: Did he help the people he took photos from? If not, should he have done it instead of clicking his camera? I think that he or a photographer should take photos from a disaster, otherwise we would not get aware of the awfulness of wars/such things or of the reality of them. However, look at the picture and at the others. We can find thousands of similar photos anyway. If I were Alp Sime, how would my conscious whisper to me while standing in front of these corpses? Would I dare to take the corpse's photo and go on recording the next corpse?
Today, everybody has a TV set in their apartment. Watching TV has become a regular thing for such a long time. Before, there was only one TV channel; but nowadays, various types of channels are available. Most of these channels broadcast really awful programms though.
When we begin zapping among the TV channels our TV has, we see those awkward programms as well; and as we see them, we react like: "Oh, look at this crap, who would possibly watch this?" Immediately we skip the channel. However then, we read or hear of the high ratings of these programms and we wonder. Nevertheless, that is obvious: Lots of people like them!
However, I don't blame the audience. Such programms are broadcasted mostly at noon and they are watched by those who have nothing to do - more precisely - who do not have any jobs. Unemployed men are so sick of this unemployment that they stop searching for jobs, and therefore they stay at home and sit in front of the TV. Women are also at home the whole day. So the audience is there. Now, it is important for TV channels to keep this audience in front of the TV. As people love emotional stuff, they are offered programms involving emotional issues such as marriage programms, tell-us-your-family/love-issues programms. These programms attract them indeed and become adorable for them. These problems are everywhere in the world. Almost every country has to deal with such situations.
In my opinion, The TV channels are to blame. These channels always emphasize that they are respectful towards ethique and morality, but they act in the opposite way. They show us devious and needless stuff, advertise themselves, try to make us think positive about them, expect us to love them. Unfortunately, only the uneducated and ignorant people get hooked. The literate and educated people keep on criticizing and discussing these channels. At the end, no solution is there. But this is normal because we can't find an exact and right answer for this question: "Should we withdraw a programm which people love? Should we take something away that somebody loves?"
