April
23
MdSt 20: April 23 Cultural relativity and freedom of press in journalism…
- We reviewed, today, the handout given by the sub on Friday. We discussed the concept of Cultural Relativity, which means you cannot critique or condemn another culture unless it is your own culture. Without being immersed in a culture, knowing the background to its traditions and reasons for practices and rituals that it has, you cannot judge another culture from the outside.
- We drew a comparison of Muslim culture compared to American/Canadian culture. While several students were shocked at the idea of female genital mutilation that is performed on young girls to ensure they stay pure and faithful for their husbands, we compared a possible Muslim response to the amount of sex, adultery, divorce etc that occurs in the American/Canadian culture. An individual looking into our own culture may look at it and be judgemental of how promiscuous people seem and say that it is a direct cause of the loss of family in America. A person outside a Muslim culture could say they are going against basic human rights by prohibiting women from several freedoms. Both insights are only valid if they are critiqued and judged from within their own culture.
The link to journalism, and in turn our media studies class, asks the question of whether journalists should be free to write their opinions of other cultures and their practices or whether we should withold our criticisms for our own cultures only.
- There was a paragraph assignment given on the back of the handout. Students were to write their response and post it on the weblog for April 20’s media studies blog entry.
question a)…
In my own country i do not believe that there is a valid reason for reporters to risk their life over news from foreign countries. Possibly because of the values and beliefs instilled in me from living,growing, and learning in the north american culture. We are very partriotic people, so we respect and cherish not only life, but our country as well. Protecting our fellow citizens would also be something that we need to consider and throwing ourselves our there looking for trouble by “reporting” could endanger the lives of others as well. To the average person, one would assume… risking thier life to report news would be a little out of the ordinary, and perhaps a little “over the top”. I believe that having a strong emotion for the information we need to recieve and give is something that comes very predictably comforting. Something the media does is encourage people to be aware and concerned, and the people encourage the media to supply valuable information. I think those are understandable and safe boundries to fallow. And if we need to repeat news from other countries… information that may involve us, then we should do it in a safe way, to keep from harm. Then in my opinion, it is appropriate.