Title: Economic and Moral Imperative
Summary: Shepard Smith interviews Education Secretary Arne Duncan about the allocations being made with the stimulus money. Smith also analyzes the decision making of Duncan, through a series of questions, when looking at the reforms that should be taking place before the money is spent.
Topic: http://msaraceno.wordpress.com/question/
Category: This is a journalistic source via broadcast media.
What is it? This is a recording of the Fox News interview of Arne Duncan.
Publication Information: Published on February 24, 2009
Author: Shepard Smith is the Fox News reporter covering the story.
Accessed: March 11, 2009
Support: New York City schools are used as an example of how throwing money into an education system doesn’t necessarily fix anything.
Data Systems, Race to the top, Rewarding teachers and serving rural and disadvantaged areas are examples how the kind of ideas going to be more reformed for the money coming in.
These are really the only sources used. The first source is used by the reporter to dig and try to get Duncan to reveal more about what he is talking about. The second source is used by Duncan as examples of the kinds of things to expect from him as time goes on and money is spent in the future of education. Being that Arne Duncan is the Education Secretary, his words are support enough in the sense of him being accountable for everything he says.
Audience and Agenda: The audience is huge for Fox News—totaling around 147.7 million page views per month among 13 million unique users. Approximately 80 percent of the viewers are earning $75k, which is middle-upper to upper class. With an audience in that range the amount of business coverage is probably the main use of this news source. The agenda of Fox is to provide current news for their viewers with questions that are important to the general population of viewers. The reporter was definitely asking questions that were very skeptical of Duncan’s decision making thus far. Shepard fulfills his position as an active journalist by doing so but also keeps the stations political affiliations in mind as he questions—the types of questions make this very obvious.
Usefulness: This news coverage is important in listening to what kind of information is going through the public. Secretary Duncan has ideas in mind as he initiates conversation about the topics he plans to accomplish with the stimulus money. The interview with the Carla Wade gave some insight into the fact that making a national standard is a long ways away and may be harder to do than Duncan is making it out to be. As the public is being fed this information, experts are conversing and angling at the fact that Arne Duncan will not be able to get the money to the right places; however, Duncan is adamant in making national standards a goal of this money. The coverage here is important to keeping in mind the information the general public is aware of and the information that is available through evaluation of sources and deeper structural analysis.
Works Cited: http://msaraceno.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/source-form-28/
Filed under: Uncategorized
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