MCOM 4003-Sydney Wader

America home of the free and the brave, here in the United States of America we have a lot more freedom than other countries in the press, social media, etc. The Freedom of Information Act is a piece of legislation that grants public access to documents or other data in the possession of the government agency or public authority. Unless the information falls into a category that specifically excluded from the terms of legislation. A story involving this act hit the presses and is bringing in a lot of attention. A former police officer for the Bakersfield Police Department in California has recently had claims filed against him for sending explicit images and messages to a 911 caller. The woman has also filed a claim against the police department as a whole for not properly training Officer Enrique Mosqueda or supervising him while on duty. The young woman whose name is being withheld by the media made a 911 call saying she believed her ex boyfriend was outside her home vandalizin...

Here in the United States we have pretty much total freedom on our social media accounts and whatever we want to view.  In June of 2017 Mexico had around 85 million social media user and has grown by 27% throughout the years. Internet users in Mexico on average are spending about 3.5 hour a day on their social media. They are also Facebook's 5th largest market in the entire world. With that being said I wanted to look into Mexico's overall freedom on social media where their status was marked as 'partly free' as they still face limits on their content.  Now even though they are considered to be partly free they do not have freedom of press and bloggers are arrested and even given jail time for their opinions posted online. Over the years their freedom on social media has steadily increased but began to backtrack in 2017 when government spyware became a large concern. With this spyware the internet and social media became a rather scary place to be voicing your opi...

We are always on the internet and we heavily rely on it to give us information. Everyone always cracks jokes like "Well if you read it on the internet it must me true." because obviously there are some liars on the web. Now fact checking is when you investigate an issue in order to verify the facts.   Along with fact checking we can look at misinformation which is false or inaccurate information, especially that which is deliberately intended to deceive. Now who is the king of misinformation and gets fact checked on the hour? The one and only President Donald Trump the leader of the United States seems to have a bit of a fibbing problem. CNN did study on Trump for National Fact Checking Day and found that he has made 9,451 false or misleading claims in his 802 days in office. We all know that our President has been less then truthful on multiple occasions. The Washington Post Fact Checker has recently proved just how much he stretches the truth. Trump is averaging 2...

First I want to start of explaining what exactly exploitation is and how it works. Exploitation is when someone uses a story of their own or a public story for their own personal gain. We see different cases of exploitation in the media every week and it's not always the same topic either. The sad part is people will use sad stories to scam money out of people. I was browsing Facebook late the other night and came across a story that just didn't sit right with me.  A four year old boy Nolan Scully was diagnosed with terminal cancer and recently passed away in February. After the young boy fought for his life for a year sadly like I said before lost his life a year after being diagnosed. The mother was very active in sharing Nolan's story on social media. Constantly sharing updates and photos about her little boys battle with cancer. Now here is where I got interested, in 2017 someone set up a donation page using pictures of Nolan and his story to make money for them...

Have you ever listened to a song and suddenly you think i've heard this before? You're not the only one, the world is full of copy cats that try to sneak around the rules. Copy right is defined as "the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same." Now when we think about copyright we have to take into account what fair use is and how it works. Fair Use is defined as "The doctrine that brief excerpts of copyright material may, under certain circumstances, be quoted verbatim for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research, without the need for permission from or payment to the copyright holder." Music has always played a big role in my life the old and the new. A classic song from the 80's called I Want a New Drug written by Huey Lewis is a song I wasn't quite familiar with. However, ...

According to Google reporter's privilege is "reporter's protection under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources." Now reporter's privilege is always popping up in our news and I've never really understood it until now. Buzzfeed was in court this past week in Florida when a judge was questioning who the confidential source was for the Trump Dossier. Buzzfeed stated that they should not have to release who the reporter was that worked on the controversial story. Now the big problem Buzzfeed is facing is the law suit from Russian tech creator Aleksej Gurbarev suing for defamation . The Trump Dossier had Gurbarev and his company named in the documents that discussed Trump's deep ties with Russia. Now the problem is with this lawsuit the court is demanding the name of a confidential source to be released which legally they do not have to. Buzzfeed is also boosting stories about sexual a...