OTM #2: Spotlight on "Spotlight" the movie

This episode of on the media was an extra and short, but I thought it was relevant to our discussion on religion last week and to the Oscars last night having received the top academy award "Spotlight" took best picture.

It was surprising to hear another religion that had tried to cover up shameful things about the church, this time being the catholic church and child molesting that they had tried to cover up.

After listening to the extra On The Media: Spotlight on "Spotlight" the movie, I was shocked I had never heard this about this occurrence in the Catholic and I had missed the news about the movie.

I'm not an avid movie-goer and plenty of people have told me they are going to give me a movification after they are shocked by the number of movies I haven't seen. I don't do this intentionally, I just generally don't have a lot of time too.

As for the article on the Catholic cover-up of child molestation, that was released way back in 2002. I was in 3rd grade and what 3 grader do you know that is concerned with what is going on in the world.

The most interesting thing said in this episode was when Sacha Pfeiffer, who worked for the spotlight team, said was because religion are private institutions by law they are not required to hand over records and they most likely are not going to. It is kind of a duhhhhh statement, but really an ah-ha moment for myself.

After some digging I finally found both parts of the original article.
Part 1: Church allowed abuse by priest for years
Part 2: Geoghan preferred preying on poorer children


Also a book written by the Spotlight.


I also learned found an interesting comparison while trying to find the two parts to the original articles that Boston is very catholic and like the Desert News for the LDS, they have the CRUX. I don't know if the Crux is owned by the catholic church like the LDS church owns Desert News, but the Crux seems to address a lot of problems within the catholic church. Makes me wonder even though they are covering all things catholic, should the job of these papers be to hold the private institutions accountable? Do they?


Going back to the focusing on the LDS church I tried to find topics there of that were controversial, like polgamy and the suicide rate after general conference. I found an explanation of the LDS church justifying use for polgamy and guidance for dealing with suicide, but it wasn't really the detail I was hoping to find.

The story on the Catholic church reminds me of the documentary "Prophet's Prey" that was shown earlier this year and just before "Spotlight" was released actually, that talked about the FLDS branching away from the LDS church and the awful things and corruption that was and is going on in our backyard of Colorado City.

Now, I am not discrediting the LDS from this film about the FDLS or would not even say the film is a reflection of what the LDS history with polgamy was like, but I think it is important to know the history of thereof. And I think it is important if you are LDS to know of the FLDS, because like it is derived from the LDS and call themselves the Fundamentalists of Latter-Day Saints.

There were two things that I took away from this podcast outside of the story.

One, having gone into this major with the curiosity of becoming a journalist, I like that fact that the Spotlight team stands for what journalism really should be as investigation. It is hard with pressure of technology to not scratch more then the surface for the sake of time and  daily entertainment. I appreciate that the movie focuses on this aspect too instead of covering the story from maybe the perspectives of the victims.

"We also that it reminds people on how important investigative journalism is. You have to support this work. That means buying your newspaper, get a digital subscription, get home delivery, that's the revenue that helps us do what we do." -Pfeiffer

The second thing I took away and  I commend Pfeiffer for was her example of civility. Despite the awful truth part of the Catholic church's history that she helped undercover she didn't discredit the church but she hoped that this story would only lead the church to hold itself more accountable.

"We certainly hope it keeps the church working hard to make sure this doesn't happen again."
-Pfeiffer

This is a movie I will definitely be making time for in the future to watch.

Religion 2.0

I went to YouTube and punched in religion and came across this video. I never knew about George Carlin prior, but I was intrigued by the title "Religion is Bullshit." It shed some humor on a sensitive subject and a little light, so I thought I would share it with the class before diving into my own history with religion.

I wasn't religious until... well lets say I was invented to start attending church when I was in the fourth grade. And so my sister and I started to attend church with a teacher, whom we respected and admired, and who later became our sixth grade teacher. And to a religion my mom grew up in, but was not an active member. Does the jargon sound a little familiar? 

Now I don't know if other religions classify their members and their routine attendance by active or inactive, but to clarify things up for people who are unfamiliar I'm talking specifically to about the LDS religion. 

I had my feeling of epiphany that the church was true, just like the missionaries said I would, shortly after their lessons, which would be the beginning to my journey of my faith. I wasn't completely new to the church. I had been blessed as a baby and even remember earlier years in primary. After the lessons from the missionaries my sister and I were baptized by my grandpa, then we followed suit. Church on Sundays to keep the Sabbath holy and because it made your day "just so much better", attending all the meetings and extra curricular activities during the week because "you were putting God first in your life", and when you couldn't find answers to your questions you would "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."

I think back on my times of anxiety and guilt reflecting on myself and whether or not I would make it into the celestial kingdom, whether I was worthy enough to; whether my nonmember dad, and other beloved nonmember relatives, would choose the church in the afterlife or miraculously be converted in this life; whether my inactive mother, grandma, grandpa would ever become active again so we could be a "family together forever." I would try to suppress my anxiety with my faith by doubting my doubts and bleach my guilt when I gathered enough courage to confess my sin.  Then motivating myself to remain worthy by reminding myself I didn't want to have those same feelings of guilt ever again and to remain happy and clean. But I still always feared I was never truly clean again and therefor not clean enough and wouldn't make it into the celestial kingdom? But would i even be happy there if I wasn't with my family? I just had to remember to bring in the full circle to doubt my doubts before I doubted my faith. 

But don't worry because the people who didn't learn of the truth in this life, will get the opportunity to in the next. And we are blessed to get to know the truth in this life, but will be damned if we ever deny it. I remember being jealous of the people who didn't know of the true church and got to be worldly with the promise of a clean slate in the afterlife. Where I was damned when I sinned because I denied the truth leading me to think I would never make it to the celestial kingdom while the non-truth knowers got a one way free ticket. Jealousy, another sin. 

I left for college with a clean confessed slate, to a place where no one knew of my hypocritical sins and for a new start to maybe being truly clean. Until I made friends, who gave me my first home away from home, and led me to question the definition of family and rethink again "family together forever." I wanted them and their sinful selves with me in heaven. And then I put myself in "temptation" and opened my mind to the sinful side of opposition. I felt guilty of course and hypocritical again which led to a lot of confusion, because I sinned, but didn't feel sinful. I still felt like the same me people had befriended and loved.

I asked tough questions searching for answer because "ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" Mathew 7:7-8. But I got tired of not being heard with the reiterated answers people told me because that is what they had been taught their whole lives. 

I even thought I would be a better Mormon when I transferred down to Utah, but it was the same stuff different day. I finally got tried of being told there was only one way to believe and that is all what religion is trying to convince you of. To me it was like saying there is only one true and right way to live and we all know that isn't true. 

Privacy 2.0

What do I believe about privacy? I don’t know. I feel like a lot of this political stuff I am still naïve in a sense of what is going on.

I think back to a recent friend I met here at Dixie who keeps a sticky note over her front camera because she knows how easy it is to hack into them. I asked her if she knew how to do it. She said no. So I'm skeptical as to how easy it is. And maybe somebody in class could enlighten me.

And I am the bit of the opposite, if I knew somebody was watching me I would probably moon the camera or do some practical joking of some kind. But the key word “if”, because I don’t know if or when they are. Or if it is all the time. And I can’t help but think how boring I would be to watch 96% of the time.

I went out hunting on youtube to see if I could be taught how to hack into my own front camera. I have yet been able to do it, but now I am almost kind of determined to figure it out now for kicks and giggles. If I figure it out, I'll let ya know. But I did find this video that showed how to see if anyone might be on my computer that shouldn't be.

My task manager looked a little different working on Windows ten, but I didn't find anything suspicious. Though after watching the documentary in class this week, I am skeptical to think that the FBI and NSA are surveilling my computer and yours backdoor through Microsoft security systems, where they aren't readily noticeable.

Regarding other aspects of privacy, I think it is cool that ads pop up for me, because they are convenient and I have enough self-control not to buy everything I want versus what I need. However I also don’t pay a lot of attention to them either. But I think our generation might be naïve to the idea of privacy and what it truly is and vice versa can be said about older generations by taking our day and age and thinking its all evil under the argument that it isn’t how things use to be.

Are we willing to sacrifice our some of our freedom to be monitored by the government for safety? Or are we going to be more vigilante and start to rebuild closer communities? Maybe we are so opposed to the idea of being monitored because we are afraid of government abusing the power or individuals like ourselves figuring out how to abuse by means of the government?

One last thought on privacy that is derived from journalism, but I think can be applied on an individual basis is... When learning about journalism in college they pose the question “why are journalists able to exploit private matters of celebrities and public figures and not individuals within the community?” And the answer is because they are a public figure as a celebrity and public official they have willingly put themselves out in the public. So now my question is, are we giving up our rights to privacy by putting ourselves out there willingly through social media?

Learning 2.0

Trying to think of a different way of learning is actually abstract for me, because the system of how we are trained to learn is all I have ever known. I have never questioned it or even questioned there was a different way of learning. I have always just accepted it for what it was. 

Now I am not a student who follows the philosophy the "C's get degrees" and have always resented the idea of doing the bare minimum in school just to get by. 

Maybe part of the problem is how we have evolved in the way we learn. The video helps illustrate that evolution. 

In the beginning of the video states "Education has never changed its definition" and at the end says "It just changed the way of teaching and learning," but is that the problem.

This is just a speculation but I feel as though memory was more valued in the beginning of education. This leads me to reflect on Postman's argues in his book "Amusing Ourselves to Death : A public discourse in the age of show business." Could we replace the words "show business" with "education" and see the argument that the only way we can teach is if is entertaining? Would it be valid with the argument of the evolution of technology of a projector, to power points, a smart board, ebooks, etc?  Is the value of memory only valued long enough to get through the standardized testing and move on? Almost could be paralleled to the Postman's chapter of  "Now.... This." where our culture only values on the completion of the system and the speed thereof and not the process. 

I have always thought the way of thinking to do the bare minimum was just wasting your  own time, and that if we have do it anyways than you might as well get the most out of it. But I am an optimist and like this perspective on life, but I think it defaults me to omitting that a negative perspective might have a valid point. Like the fact that those students probably felt exactly as I had described them about the school system, that it is wasting their time.  

This video animates along with Sir Ken Robinson talk and it helped put my optimistic default in perspective. 

But I am still left to wonder how do we change the system?