This article fascinated me because I never really thought about the news. I always thought it was the informative program that everyone watched to be updated on events. I never knew that it was a source of propaganda and controversy. What I was most surprised about was the way the government carries out this plan. They make this videos then they either send them away to stations or the stations come shopping for them. For example, the WCIA station in Illinois needed a segment involving farming so they turned to the Department of Agriculture who sent them segments.

In this article, it explanins how any news director could go up on a government funded website and request a free-satellite feed for their program. This piece of evident is concrete and there are no spotty sections. People read this section and make easy connections to the main idea of the article. When I read it i immediately thought of an online shopping website and when you find something you like, you can simply click "Add to Cart". This example was used was a strong piece of evidence. An example of weak evidence from this article is when they spit numbers at you about how much each administration spent on these advertisements. It says how Bush spent 254 million dollars in his first term, double of what Clinton spent. When they start spitting numbers at you, it begins to get boring and that does not add to the article.

In Barstow and Stein's article, they explain how the government is taking over the media then backed it up with concrete details. This differs from Nicholas Carr's article because in Carr's article, Carr inserted opinions as well as facts. He added opinions to give the reader everyone's point of view on the topic. In Barstow and Stein's article, the writer does not insert anyone's opinions so you only see his point of view. He probably did this because it is a controversial subject and if you bring in someone else point of view, the reader could beleive that someone lese and not you.

This article seems objective. Barstwo and Stein present the facts and describe the situation but do not express their opinion's on the idea like Nicholas Carr did. When Nicholas Carr presented a new fact or opinoin, he expressed his views about it. When Barstow and Stein present their topic and examples, they explain what happened, explain how it pertains to the article, then move on. I enjoyed this article more than Carr's because I got the facts and facts only. In Carr's article, I had to read through opinion after opinion. This sense of neutral position prompted me to focus on the foacts and topic at hand.

Barstow and Stein's article was interesting because it allowed me to view the media in a new light. It made me realize it was not the squeaky clean program that people watched to learn about the world. Everything has its problems and governmental advertisements are one of the many problems with the media.