Praise The Onion!

In the world of satirical fake news and citizen journalism, individuals without professional journalism training can utilize modern technology or the internet to produce an opinion or fact-check media. Fake news also known as mock news, is similar to parody displayed in a format that is usually of mainstream journalism. News satires depend on irony and deadpan humour. It is sometimes mistaken for real news, which is exactly why it exists. It allows for the truth or a bias to be understood by an average person through entertainment. Citizen journalism and fake news show bias where as regular news show facts. For example, blogs allow people to interact with the world just like journalists in order to inform, except they are purely opinions and not facts. Fact-checking news in a newspaper article and pointing out factual errors or bias is another advantage. Therefore, both citizen journalism and fake news, in a way, go hand in hand. Personally, I tend to be bias towards news satires. As a media literate, I find myself analyzing brand names, advertising, social issues, and how technology has an impact on people. I found a video on The Onion, which is basically a fake news channel. The channel puts together various actors and actresses in order to display fake news stories which mocks at real life issues. The viewer can then understand the bias or maybe some of the truth and schemes behind corporate companies that make people buy their products. The Onion also pokes fun at social issues and exaggerates them in order to send out a message. Clearly, I am bias towards the fake news. As I am sitting here writing in my blog, a citizen journalist, I think fake news is a good way to have a good laugh and learn something at the same time. For example, check out this Onion video.

Apple MacBook Wheel  (click)

This is a mock of the Apple brand. Every year the company tries something new in order to make more money. They will think of many ways to make life simpler for consumers. What they mock at is how the new "revolutionary" MacBook Wheel will accomplish daily tasks by typing just a few dozen spins and clicks of a wheel. Who would want to do that? I know i wouldn't.The man being interviewed says, " I never realized how much i hated using a keyboard until i saw this thing." What the Onion also emphasizes is how the man spent 45 minutes just to send an email to someone. This laptop provides sentence options so people don't have to think as much while completing work on word (the Onion tries to emphasize how it will only make people dumber). Its a great piece of technology everyone has on their wish list, but in the end, according to Onion, its a piece of useless money wasting product. It just makes life harder and the person dumber. It breaks down the Apple ads in order to expose the underlaying consequences. There is great irony and sarcasm in this news story. Funny huh? 

Next time you can watch out while buying Apple laptops. I recently has a bad experience with the MacBook as well. I bought the MacBook Pro this summer for school as it was recommended. I was really excited to have an amazing new laptop that has advanced features. As I've used Windows all my life, i thought i would simply download MSN and start video chatting. What i didn't know was that using MSN on a Mac didn't allow me to video chat with my friends. I mean, it costs more than my HP right? I thought there would be more options. Not only that, i wasn't able to send offline messages to any of my friends and neither could I receive any from them. In the end i had to resort to other options. Watching this commercial got a good laugh out of me because I could totally relate to their bias. My example is just a minor example of why these satires are important. They are like assassins, killing evil (in their own media literate-ish way). Sometimes people need other opinions to finalize their own. Watching fake news is a great way to influence opinions, which will almost always be cruelly correct.

 Works Cited

Various, "Citizen Journalism". Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. 10th October 2009. Web.  

Various, "News Satire". Wikipedia -The Free Encyclopedia. 10th October 2009. Web.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_satire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA&feature=related