I do feel that there is a significant difference in the P.O.Vs put forth by these two different news sites.  The guardian.co.uk seems to like the idea that Trump is willing to spend so much money to build a world class golf course.  The article spends much time describing the scene and how beautiful it would be.  At one point the author even says that "you have to feel sorry for Donald Trump."  What Trump plans on doing would, in a way, help the local economy according to Jenkins.  He says that it would create between 300 to 6,000 jobs.  There is no say if the local mom & pop stores would benefit.  The author makes it sound like a good idea, until towards the end when he proposes that other beautiful have been wrecked by quick commercial gain.  He says that in the end Scotland will probably regret the decision to allow Trump to build.

In the other corner, the first thing you see is a hilarious picture of Donald Trump's entertaining haircut.  I feel like this article starts off on the wrong foot, that photo of Trump automatically seems like they are trying to mock him.  ABC does argue the other side.  They also bring up the point that the resort would bring much needed jobs to the area, but they support the idea instead of proposing Scotland would regret it.  They even go so far as to say the Trump's development would stabilize the sand dunes and help the environment.

Overall, I think that the country of origin has much to do with the way the writers think.  The UK article is against Trump building in Scotland, while the American article is for it.  As for the video clip, greed is good when in the right hands.

News websites.

I honestly do not read a lot of news on the internet, and when I do it's mostly technology blogs like engadget.com or gizmodo.com.

One website what I find particularly reliable is snopes.com.  It is an urban legend website that determines whether or not farfetched stories and forwarded chain mail is true or false.  The editor, Barbara Mikkelson does research and cites her sources at the end of each story, and she also signs her name in a witty and ironic way.  For example, in an article about radiation from granite countertops, she signed her name "Barbara 'counter measures' Mikkelson."  I like the site because it helps to shed some light on what stories and pictures are real, and which are fake.

The second site that I have been looking at recently is the New York Times.  I do not read it much, but it is the site that my government professor gets quiz questions from.  Therefore, it is in my best interest to read the same material the quiz questions come from.  What I can tell from my brief time reading it is that the NYT has a sort of liberal bias.  Large amounts of this bias could be from Obama being more active in the media than McCain.  Either way, the NYT tells me what I need to know for class.

Finally, the site from which I get local news is news4jax.com.  I am from Jacksonville, Florida, and now that I can no longer watch their news broadcast, my last resort is to read their website.  The reason that I chose news4jax opposed to firstcoastnews.com is because it is not affiliated with a major broadcast network.  News4jax is an independent news station.  And that is how I get my news from the murder capital of the south.

Nope.

There are several differences between American media outlets and international outlets.  The major difference has to do with agenda.  American outlets present a more obvious bias for certain political parties and moral values than international outlets do.  For example, Fox News has an obvious conservative bias while CNN has a liberal bias.

The reason for this is that each outlet has an agenda or something it is trying to accomplish by supporting one view point instead of another.  The motivation for a viewpoint could be money, political support to attract a certain audience, or in Fox News' case, supporting one political party and not another.  When reporting on American news, international outlets do not have as much as a bias.  I do understand that everybody has a bias, so I am in no way saying they are fair and equal, but international outlets do a better job of being objective.  Being an international outlet, however, supporting a political party with better foreign policy would be in its best interest.

Both CNN and Fox News have gone under fire for being biased, the BBC has had its fair share of fingers pointed at it.  In recent news, the BBC was accused of promoting "left-wing views and anti-Christian sentiment."

In my critical thinking class we learned about "bullshit."   "Bullshit" is an argument without the concern of the truth of a belief.  What I am getting at is, no matter how fair and balanced something is (a.k.a. how true something is), there are always people that will argue (bullshit) the opposite point.

2008 Olympics

Believe it or not, this is not the first time this discussion has come up for me.  While watching the opening ceremony with my roommate who is from China, he provided me with some unique insight that only he could.  

After a couple days of watching the Olympics for myself and viewing the amazing facilities and show the Chinese were putting on for the world, I was impressed.  China has been a sort of social mystery for the past few decades due to government restrictions, so I was happy to see that the country had opened up to the world for an event as prestigious as the Olympics.  While reviewing the Opening Ceremony with my roommate "Yang", he said something that changed my opinion.  He said "I love my country, but I do not like my government."  After talking a bit, I came to the conclusion that while he had nothing against the Olympics, he did not care for the fact that the government spent so much money on the games.  He mentioned that the money (according to him was $400 billion) could have been spent more wisely helping the people of China instead of showing off by hosting the Olympic games.  For example, he said that most of rural China is not very wealthy and could use financial assistance, but instead, the government built a stadium.  To sum things up, China could have spent the money on a better cause.

China is a country with a rich history of over 5,000 years.  Several of the world's most important inventions have come from China, including paper and gun powder.  But, as Yang put it, there is a big difference between loving your country and loving your government.  I believe that the Chinese government has some responsibility to its people that it should have addressed before spending so much money to host the Olympics.  It is important to understand that the government did spend a considerable amount of money to clean up Beijing and make it more friendly to foreign visitors, but the improvements did not go far outside of Beijing.  For example, Beijing officials set up a hotline to properly translate many street signs, they also tried to lighten up the pollution by shutting down factories and taking cars off the road for the games.  Not to mention the simple fact that China would rather spend money to impress the world than to help its' own citizens.  At least in the US, the people are able to participate in government to have a say in what the country does.  If it were up to the people of China I believe that the 2008 Olympics would have been held elsewhere.

While I am still in awe of the Olympics and opening ceremony China performed, I do believe the government should have considered using the funds for a better cause.  You would think that after all the things the people of China do for their country, the government could pay them back in one way or another.  I do think that China is a great country with great people, but the government and infrastructure could use great improvement.