Women's Leadership Conference coming soon

Maria Di Bianca explains the Women's Leadership Conference and encourages both men and women to attend in the MU Student center on Friday November 15th, 2013.

Buttons and save the date cards were handed out at today's tabling for the Women's Leadership Conference 

The Center for Leadership and Service at Mizzou puts on a Women's Leadership Conference every year. The conference is meant to promote Networking, Education and Equality and is being held on March 15th, 2014. Today, members of the Women's Leadership Conference's Executive Council were promoting the event in the Student Center.

"We will have speakers coming in from all across the country this year, it will be a great opportunity for networking," said Executive Council member Maria Di Bianca. These speakers include Elisa Parker, co-founder of award winning social change program See Jane Do, based out of San Francisco. Dr. Cathy Scroggs, a member of the chancellors staff will also be speaking, as well as many other leaders in and around the Columbia area. The tabling today was meant to inform students of the opportunity to not only attend, but be a speaker at this event, as well as pick up a nice button. 

News is Crazy

I am not at all surprised by what was presented in this article. Many of the smartest people I know have a political viewpoint, and even if you are a "smart person" you're still going to want to hear that what you think is right. Sometimes even more so, I think. These networks and publications have a massive viewing audience, theres no way it is just limited to "narrow-minded, politically obsessed characters who send mass e-mails from their mother’s basement." 

I have spoken quite a few times about how much I despise the overbearing political tilt of some networks. When I talk about this I am mostly referring to 24-hour news networks like Fox news and those painful radio shows. I understand that essentially every newspaper has a bias, though. I think in that case, its more effective for the viewer to deal with it and take the news with a minute grain of salt, rather than disregarding newspapers all together. A matter of a few words can shift the bias of an article, and finding completely neutral words to describe every situation is not very realistic, especially considering time constraints. 

What this article mostly reminded me of was my dad. He certainly leans to the right, and thats tough in a liberal city like Madison. There is a liberal talk radio show in madison that actually is fairly popular, due to its location. Sometimes my dad puts it on, just for kicks. He, in that regard, goes against everything this article mentions. I think he likes to listen to the other side just so he can hate it more and have more ammunition against it, by hearing their quite frankly, outrageous arguments at times. I consider myself fairly neutral, and this station has the power to irk me just as much as Rush Limbaugh could. 

In the end, there is an equal amount of bias on either side. While it is nice that one side isn't worse than the other, that mean one side is never better, and that is what leaves us with the situation that we have so often been encountering: nothing is getting done. Sometimes people need to be right and sometimes they need to be wrong for there to be progress, but since both sides have enough mediums and supporters to pump themselves up, that is rarely seen.

Afghanistan

In previous journalism classes, we have learned about the duties of journalism. These duties include being a watchdog, making sure the government is doing its job, and giving the people the information they need to know to make informed decisions and to be safe in the world that they are living in. These values were explained within the context of American journalism, but many countries could definitely benefit from holding these same things important.

As far as Afghanistan goes, as important as it is to keep it's own population informed, it is just as important to continue to broadcast what is going on there to the world. As a unstable country, it seems, at least in the opinion of the people who made this video, it will be difficult to keep their heads above water without foreign assistance. Afghanistan needs journalism to make sure they are not swept under the rug, forgotten, and as a result succumb to the Taliban again.

The watchdog element is also very important in keeping Afghanistan moving forward. If they are able to stay in control of their media and continually keep track of what the government is doing, it will be more difficult to shady business to begin to creep in again. Having an independent media source has proved, time and time again, important in avoiding authoritarian rule. When Mussolini came to power, one of the most effective ways he gained control and spread fascism was to take over the media and require every journalist to be a registered fascist. Afghanistan has been there before, Taliban rule is not a distant memory, and they recognize that one of the best ways to steer clear of it is to keep control of their media.

It was also interesting to hear the positive Afghani support of our occupation there. I don't know if that man speaks for everyone, but it seemed that perhaps having troops over there isn't the worst thing in the world. There is a very strong sense of opposition to being in Afghanistan at all, of course there is, nobody ever wants to have to put Americans in danger. It was reassuring to hear that we aren't being a complete nuisance. That guy is right, we cannot stay there forever, though, and I wonder what steps we will/are putting in place to make sure we leave it safely.