Pictures That Lie

For this assignment, I chose the picture of Katie Couric taken on her first night as an anchor for CBS news. I chose this picture because it is an example of how the media can take an image of a celebrity and change it to make them look perfect, when in actuality they are just normal human beings. The not-doctored picture of Katie originated by CBS and released in May of her first year, but the slimmed-down picture appeared in the September issue of Watch Magazine, a publication owned by CBS. The picture was manipulated to make Katie's figure more slim, her dress darker and more flattering, and her skin tone was given a more pink hue. I think the picture was manipulated to make Katie appear more "attractive". This manipulation is completely harmful because its a lie to the viewers and makes people think that what they normally look like is not okay. It gives the perception that famous people have no flaws, but it is not true.

CLT

Last Thursday in class we went and visited the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology, or CLT for short. CLT is located on the first floor of the Coates Library, and when we walked down the stairs and saw everything, I was shocked because I had no idea that it was even there before. There are tons of resources available at CLT. There are studios, which consist of high-end Windows and Macintosh work stations that each include color and black-and-white laser scanners, audio and video digitalizing capabilities and other multimedia software. There is also a Digital Audio Lab, Media Presentation Lab, Video Conference Center, and Innovation Studio. CLT is useful for many things, such as if you just need a computer to use, or you have more advanced technology assignments that include a lot of video and audio requirements. It will be useful for this class in that if I ever have questions, I can go down there and find someone to help me out.

COPYRIGHT

During last class, Josh Hardin from the library came and gave us a presentation about copyrighting and its history and why it is used. Copyrighting got started in 1790, the year the constitution was ratified, predating the Bill of Rights-showing its importance to our country. It was important because the whole issue came down to money, and if something you do is not copyrighted, then anyone else can take it and use it as their own, and possibly make money over it. The terms for copyright are its the authors birthday plus 70 years. The law used to be the authors birthday plus 50 years, but that was changed when the death of Walt Disney came around, and the company feared losing their copyright on all the characters and stories he had created, so they petitioned the government to change the law and won. We also learned some scary aspects of copyright, like the federal government defines copyright as making at least 10 copies of something at a value of $2,500, and also that everything someone does on the Internet is track able back to them. On college campuses, there are hundreds of students every day that receive notices regarding copyright infringement from things such as file sharing.

COPYRIGHT by Zia Lunden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.