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America is Vaccinated.. So What Now?

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  America is actually ahead of schedule with its vaccination rollout. More than half of the adults have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. This is a big step towards the "back to normal" that we so desperately crave. But, while things are looking up for us, the pandemic is worsening for many other nations. India is a prime example. Just this past weekend, India set a global record for COVID infections. This situation appears to highlight a glaring issue. The only reason the U.S. was able to vaccinate this many people is that only a handful of countries actually have access to the vaccine. India has been begging for help and it is only now that America has promised to send them leftover vaccines and raw materials for vaccine production. I feel like this is only happening because of public outcry. America seemed like it was going to quit literally leave these countries to die. I am glad that something is being done. The sooner everyone has access to the vaccine, the...
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Senate Makes Move to Stop Asian Hate

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  This week the Senate decided to take a stand on the issue of Asian hate crimes. A bill was passed 94-1 to combat these hate crimes. Over the past year, there has been a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. Many have attributed this to Trump blaming the pandemic on China, and referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus". While the U.S. has almost always harbored negative feelings towards China. But Trump's attitude most definitely added fuel to the fire. It is pretty amazing how fast the Senate got to work on drafting a bill and ultimately passing it. While bills on gun control and protecting black people seemingly die on the floor time and time again. It is still good that something was done because hate crimes are especially heinous and need to be dealt with. But I do not think more policing and "education" is going to do anything. Bigots usually do not want to be educated and the people spreading harmful rhetoric are rarely ever truly "ignorant". But,...
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Facebook News Strikes Again: An Era of Misinformation

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  Facebook used to just be a normal social media platform. Nowadays, it is synonymous with the famous phrase "fake news". This can be due to CEO Mark Zuckerberg's failure to properly label harmful misinformation. These actions allowed conspiracy theories like the anti-vaxxer movement and Q-Anon to gain lots of traction and spread like wildfire across the platform. Today people use social media platforms like Facebook as their main source of information. Rather than obtaining information from reliable publications and journalists. Currently, there is misinformation regarding COVID-19 running rampant on the platform.  Everything from people denying that the pandemic is even real to outright spreading lies about the COVID vaccine. There are even claims that the vaccine causes infertility . Due to this misinformation and wild conspiracy theories, people seem to be more afraid of the vaccine than the actual virus. Zuckerberg has promised time and time again to do something to ...
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Biden's Crisis at the Border

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  When Biden was running for president in 2020, he made a promise to close down border camps and put an end to "children in cages". Now it is nearly three months into his presidency and little to nothing has been done. There was no "freeze" of deportations for 100 days. And there are more children than ever in ICE custody at these border patrol camps. Many facilities have become so crowded that border patrol officers are scrambling trying to move these kids somewhere. One example is a facility in Texas designed to hold only 250 occupants is filled to the brim, with over 4,100 migrant children and adults. Officials are clearly overwhelmed with the influx of people in custody. Instead of closing these places down as promised, the Biden administration has been opening more and more facilities and keeping more children in custody. The children often end up staying in these detention centers instead of being transferred to government shelters that would be able to prope...
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Trump's Effect on Journalism

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 While Trump divided many, most can agree that he had a major impact on journalism and media. Some deem him the "Twitter President". No other president was as heavily involved on social media platforms as Trump. Rather than giving press conferences and taking questions from reporters, he would be tweeting practically everything, at any time of day. This turned out to actually be great for the media. Journalists had a fresh story every single day for 4 straight years. Anytime Trump said anything it would be trending on the internet all day and be the main focus. The media ended up doing a great job of informing the people about Trump's latest executive action and policy decisions. Although, some feel that the laser focus and preoccupation on Trump detracted from more important news developments. With Biden in office, we can also see how the media is handling things much differently this time.  Biden ran on claiming to be the total "opposite" of Trump. People re...
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The Problem With Amazon

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  Amazon went viral the other day. Only in the worst possible way. Over the last few years, journalists have been detailing the "shameful" working conditions of Amazon warehouse employees and delivery drivers. One main thing that has continued to stand out is the report that workers end up having to urinate in bottles due to the company hardly allowing any bathroom breaks. On March 24th via Twitter, Representative Mark Pocan brought up Amazon's union-busting and the aforementioned peeing in bottles. Not long after, an official Amazon Twitter account replied with the now-infamous: "   You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one." https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359?s=20 This reply was deemed to be some classic "damage...
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Fear and Loathing in Real Journalism: a Tribute to Hunter S. Thompson

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 My first exposure to the work of Hunter S. Thompson was when I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was in high school. While visually striking with some memorable performances, it did not do a lot with explaining Thompson's huge impact on journalism as we know it. Thompson was known for inventing "gonzo" journalism. He would be heavily involved with the subject he was writing about. This gave audiences a firsthand encounter, something that did not exist in journalism at the time. His most famous example of this was when he spent a year living with the Hells Angels motorcycle club. Readers felt as if they were getting an "authentic" experience unlike anything else since Thompson was an active participant in the group.  Nowadays we are used to journalists spending time with their subjects in order to get a better palpable story. Thompson's name is not thrown around nearly as much as it used to be. Today he really only lives on thanks to Johnny Depp...
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