My example of good media, from globaltimes.cn, brings light to the efforts China is making in order to adapt and regulate religions and their practices. The government hopes to blend the religions more into Chinese society and prevent illegal actions from taking place. This includes the illegal establishment of monasteries and and statues and mass commercialization of the major religions. The religions have also been encouraged to participate in charities to provide aid to people who may or may not be tied to that denomination. This regulation should be beneficial to the government, Chinese culture, and religions because it will help their development and to become closer to Chinese society.
This article is merely a report on recent events connected to religious regulations in China, but I believe that this is a good example of media because it explains broadly who is involved, what types of measures the government will take, and how it will affect Chinese people. It is not expressed in the article how this change is expected to affect daily living, but it illuminated the issue of illegal practices undertaken by religious groups to me and showed how higher regulations can be beneficial to Chinese society. The ability of the author to publish this information brings this issue to light for the audience and expresses how Chinese culture will hopefully prosper from these new changes to basic religious law.
In my example of bad media, I chose to search for a highly contested topic in our nation. One of these current issues is whether or not marijuana should be legalized across the country. I understand many pros and cons regarding this issue and am not completely set on one side in the argument. The article that I found against Marijuana legalization, however, uses Colorado as a premise to not allow legislation to pass in other states. The article comes from northjersey.com and makes many claims as to how Marijuana has worsened crime rates and increased marijuana-related traffic accidents since the state officially legalized the drug. While I believe that the article contains real and factual evidence, the author tries to lead the audience by mentioning statistics that have never been measured but is assumed by the author to be n support of their stance. These include the cost of drug recovery, law enforcement and health care related to Marijuana use. The author uses reliable sources, such as the Colorado Department of Public Safety, but uses percentages which confuse the audience by projecting the numbers to make them seem bigger: arrests for Latino youth has risen 29 percent since legalization and 58 percent for African Americans, but what was it originally? 29 and 58 percent both seem like a lot unless the number of arrests prior was an extremely low number. These tactics ultimately caused me to question the validity of the argument which certainly was not the initial goal of the article.