Bush Library: Do I care?

There were a lot of debates among students and faculties about Bush Library in SMU campus.

I personally don't care whether Bush Lib will be constructed or not. However, I do care about my parking spot and time consuming to find a parking space. During the regular semester, it is already difficult to find a parking space. However, if the library is established and cars are forced to move to other parking lots, then it will be much more difficult to find one and even, be in class on time.

When I first found out that there will be a Bush Library on campus, I thought that it might be good for SMU to gain more reputation as well as popularity. I read SMU Daiy Campus and a junior student, Andrew Hemming argued that "the presence of the Bush Library and Institute would increase the academic reputation of the school, giving it 'name recognition.' Hemming began his presentation by reading the university's mission statement, which states, in part, that the university 'is to be a leading private institution of higher learning that expands knowledge through research and teaching.'" I was totally agreed with it at first, so when I heard that there were so many protests or opinions against the library, and I wondered why.

SMU President Turner said, “It is indeed an honor for SMU to have reached the next stage of the selection process in preserving and sharing historical documents and artifacts, the George W. Bush Presidential Library at SMU would be a tremendous resource for the study of presidential decision-making in this post 9-11 era. If selected as the site of this resource, SMU would welcome visitors, students of all ages, and scholars from throughout the world to its campus and to Dallas. We look forward to further discussions with the selection committee on the details of this historic project.”

I saw the establishment of the library in good way at first, however, as I heard more and more opinions on that issue, I became worried about that the Bush library will affect on students' research in different way that the builders didn't expect. For example, for person like me -- who doesn't like Bush -- might worried on future such as Bush Institute, or effects on university's policy making. The decision can be more conservative than it used to be, in my opinion.

Last semester, I took Senior seminar in International Relations major, and a student who was working at the admission office said that people called them a lot saying their sons or daughters planned to go to SMU or other schools, but if the Bush Library is built, they will or will not let them go to SMU." Bush Library is not about the library, but about the criticism and reputation on the President himself.

Rathergate and blogging

*What happened?

September 8, 2004
Dan Rather reported on CBS 60 Minutes that in Lt. Col.Jerry B. Killian reported that Bush failed to obey an order to submit his physical examination and was found unfit for flight status during President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Service in several report.

September 10,
The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other media examined the documents' authenticity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather#Killian_documents

Rather claimed that the documents had been authenticated by experts, but CBS reported that the source had misled the network about how he had obtained them.

Rather retired as a CBS News anchor due to this scandal.

*Perspectives

As a news consumer
Rathergate provoked distrust on the media in general. Bloggers were more accurate on information gathering, and the big media somewhat ignored them and degraded their information.

As a journalism student
This is an issue on ethics. As a journalism student, I learned how important ethics is related to the media (of course ethics is important on every issue), and also, I learned the impact of the media on the public sphere. Dan Rather violated ethical issue on this scandal, and as a journalism student, that was a good example not to follow, and never consider as a choice to broadcast.

As a voter
Actually, I'm not a U.S. citizen so I probably cannot feel the same as Americans, but anyway, as a person who live in the United States, I think the Rathergate Scandal is an incident that the media assaulted people who trusted the media as truth.

*Weblog and the media

The media cannot always be fair. It shows balanced perspectives but somewhat subject. It cannot be totally objective. People understand that point, and in my opinion, Weblog is useful in that context. Putting people's own perspectives and opinions, they can share opinions and see the whole picture much more easier by understand or critique others opinions.
By blogging, people can absorb more different viewpoints, and even more unknown information that did not aired. It also can act as fact checkers, and I think, the role of blogger becomes more important for people in the world of technology. It is now the world that people lead the media, not the world that the media lead people.

Combination of video journalism and blogging.

I learned video journalism and blogging are two different things even though the boundary is blurring.

The blog, “A Small Victory” is consists of two parts: a personal blog,“A Big Victory” and another blog, “Faster Than The World” that are full of articles and journals. Also when I clicked the blog, I could see a combination of video journalism and blogging: the master of the blog used youtube videos in his/her blog
It was interesting to me because the blog did not seem like a blog that “supposed to be.” My expectation of a blog is something like mine: pictures with opinions.
Articles and journals are in a Website, not in a blog. “A Big Victory” was a blog in my definition of a blog, but “Faster Than The World” was not.

Now I am confused. What is a definition of a blog?
Can a Website with periodicals and articles be a blog if everyone can post their opinion underneath the posts?