After reading the final chapter to Rodger Streitmatter’s Mightier Than the Sword, an aspiring journalist cannot help but feel a little awed by the power and impact of the fourth estate. Journalism has the ability to present the public with the image of a different future. A future that corrects the mistakes of the present and builds a better tomorrow.

This future is based on the opinions and beliefs held by the journalist that writes about it; however, the power to enact that future resides in the public. If the present situation appears to be misogynistic, pessimistic and xenophobic, journalists can reveal that nature. It is then up to the rest of the world to change it.

This power to present beliefs and opinions can be as far-reaching and political as Ida Tarbell revealing the darker side of John D. Rockefeller or as personal as Roger Ebert making everyone believe movies can be art.

Not everyone will change the world, but everyone believes there are ways the world can change. Journalism gives people a platform and a voice to express those changes. History shows us that, when a voice is heard, a journalist can change the world.

I feel that this year has cast a rather negative light upon the subject of news for me. The post 9/11 generation, I believe, has been presented with a system of Journalism that thrives upon fear-mongering and conflict.

There seems to be no Walter Cronkite that everyone can tune into to obtain reliable news. The voices for our generation, often times, are comedians. When satire seems more reliable then broadcast journalism, I tend to think there is a problem.

I try to absorb and gather as much information as possible, but it almost seems impossible when the information is so biased. News, especially recent news, has just made me so tired. I have become numb to it all.

On Saturday of last week, an article, published by The Independent and written by Katie Forster, revealed that Aspen Pharmacare, one of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies, was celebrating the price hikes of cancer drugs.

This revelation came about through the leaked emails of Aspen staff. Aspen had reportedly attempted to destroy stocks of life-saving medicine during a price dispute with the Spanish Health Service.

The article goes on to detail how certain chemotherapy drugs had risen from 4 to up to 12 times the original price in 2013. These price hikes have costed the National Health Service in England around £380m a year for prescriptions dispensed outside of hospitals.

Reports from multiple news outlets have detailed the exploitation of these health services by giant pharmaceutical companies. If the health services do not comply to outrageous demands, the companies will cut off the supply resulting in the deaths of many cancer patients.

A Department of Health spokesperson from the United Kingdom stated that the government is introducing laws that, “take action against excessive price rises on unbranded generic medicines.”

Aspen has yet to comment on these events.

A recent article, written by Shannon Deery of the Herald Sun, describes an ongoing lawsuit between the search-engine giant, Google, and George Defteros, an australian lawyer notorious for defending gang leaders.

Defteros claims that Google Australia’s search results constantly discredit him as a “Gangland lawyer.”

Specifically, Defteros said that,”[Google Australia] put you all over the internet and you’ve got to fight to clear your name.”

Defteros believes that the search results of major search engine companies should be qualified as publication and that Google should be held responsible.

To the surprise of no one, the case was dismissed immediately due to the fact that Google Australia had no control over the search results shown. That control is held by the headquarters of Google at Google Inc.

This setback has not stopped Defteros. He plans on continuing with the lawsuit until his libel issues are resolved.

In the past week, there was an op-ed posted pertaining to the legalization of recreational marijuana. The article, written by Patrick Kennedy and Kevin Sabet, argues that the leaders of the marijuana legalization movement are attempting to create a conglomerate, in order to push legalization for profit. Though the opinion of Kennedy and Sabet is not unfounded, their article is full of conjecture and bias that leaves much to be desired.

My initial issue with the article is that Kennedy and Sabet consistently make statements, such as, “Many marijuana advocates have one goal in mind: to get rich.” These statements are highly inflammatory, yet have no substance to them. There is no actual link or statement within the article that points towards any group of people pushing marijuana solely for profit. To compensate for this obvious absence, Kennedy and Sabet use phrases, like “Big Marijuana,” to put fear in their readers.

In addition to their lack of evidence, many of Kennedy and Sabet’s links within the article are from clearly biased sources that have a political agenda to achieve. In fact, one of their sources was nearly two years old and came from a website titled Marijuana Harmless Think Again.

I would agree that the information surrounding marijuana safety is unclear at the moment; however, articles, such as this one, only lead to fear-mongering and negativity.

-Dylan San Roman

On the day in which film celebrates its crowning achievements, one of cinema’s most underrated actors, Bill Paxton, has passed away due to complications during heart surgery.

Hours after the information had been released to the public, journalists, Stephanie Petit and Maria Mercedes Lara, wrote a heartfelt piece on People, detailing his greatest achievements and his final hours.

Paxton had begun his career in the 1970s; however, it wasn’t until he began to accept roles, in such critically acclaimed films as The Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986), that he began to become a household name.

Though he never became a star that consistently headlined films, Paxton consistently gave understated and impactful performances that aided to both the immersion and enjoyability of all the films he was in.

The final film that Paxton will appear in is The Circle (2017), starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson.

As the final part of the article, Petit and Lara included a series of tweets Rob Lowe, a close friend to Paxton, wrote after hearing of the new of his passing.

We will never forget what Bill Paxton did for cinema.

RIP Bill.

After this opinion column was assigned, I decided to watch the NBC Nightly News due to my fascination with the ever-increasing forehead of Lester Holt. This then led me to view the November, 10th broadcast on my laptop. After sitting through the overwhelming negativity of the program, I was able to discern a clear set of values that was displayed throughout the entire show. NBC did not seem to add or subtract from the list presented to us in class, rather, it appeared as if NBC preferred to emphasize certain values over others.

The primary value that NBC prioritized, above all else, was impact. The primary story of Friday’s broadcast was concerning Edward Snowden and whether Russia was going to deport him back to the US, as a gift to President Trump from Vladimir Putin. This exchange was by far the highest impact story of the entire show, and the implications of this deportation could result in a large amount of influence in American politics being held by Putin.

After impact, the next two values that were emphasized to a greater degree were timeliness and conflict. Due to the nature of Trump’s presidency thus far, conflict within the political landscape is at a recent high. Furthermore, new stories are breaking weekly as each new executive order gets passed or cabinet position filled. An example of these values would be the second story of the broadcast, which centered on the miscommunication between Michael Flynn, head of national security, and Vice President Mike Pence.

The final value that was relevant in this broadcast was human interest. It appeared that, after all of the negative news presented at the beginning of the program, NBC preferred to finish on some happier notes, such as some astronomical activity, George Clooney’s incoming baby, or the departure of a panda from a zoo.

In conclusion, NBC seemed to be a relatively fair source of news, even though the overall tone felt a little too dreary for my taste.

-Dylan San Roman

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