Antiwar.com v. The American Conservative

Antiwar.com v. The American Conservative 

Antiwar.com is a very busy website that contains a variety of different political news stories but for the most part centers on war and the US's involvement in international affairs. At first glance, it is hard to zone in on one particular headline or story because of how busy the page is. Writing takes up most of the space and there are very little images. At the top of the home section, there is a spot for top news stories. This is where you can find the most current articles. The top news stories section changes pretty frequently. Also on the website is a section titled viewpoints. Here you can find links to op-eds from The Hill, another widely known political news source. A lot of articles are from antiwar.com original sources, but most of the time you find stories that link to other channels. Under the viewpoints section is another section titled "spotlight" section. This consists of one article and, in the last few days of observing has remained the same. This week the spotlight article is titled "The US Dilemma in the Middle East Isn't Really a Dilemma," and is linked to another news sight called the LobeLog.

The main part of the antiwar.com site is of course the sections about antiwar sentiment. There are sections containing articles directed at the "front line" and US specifically. After clicking on some it became apparent that a lot of them were originally from The Hill. Other sections included "China", "Koreas", "Asia", "Russia", "Europe", "Iran", "Saudi Arabia", "Israel/Palestine." Antiwar.com also links articles straight to their Twitter in order to share stories in a timely (quicker) manner. Another interesting thing I observed from this website was a tab labeled "US Casualties" and "Iraq Casualties." Here you can find numbers of the deceased. 

The American Conservative website is much different. It is much more organized and clean looking. Articles are arranged in a more symmetrical way and visuals depict the headlines. The top story of the day sticks out the most at the top of the page with its corresponding image. There is also a magazine that The American Conservative viewers can subscribe to receive. As opposed to antiwar.com, most if not all of the articles on The American Conservative site are written by contributors that actually work for the company. They are not just linked news stories to other political news channels. The site also is much more broad in their topics covered where antiwar.com has a pretty obvious focus. 

Personally, I would be more inclined to find information from the American Conservative as opposed to Antiwar.com. I was not able to focus on one thing at a time while looking at Antiwar.com and the words and images all jumbled together. The American Conservative website was way more clean and professional looking, leading me to believe the content may also be something I would be more inclined to read.

https://www.antiwar.com
https://theamericanconservative.com

Facebook and its Continuing Fight with Fake News

Facebook and Its Continuing Fight with Fake News

In the past few years, the concept of fake news floating around has been a big topic. Nowadays, it is hard to trust anything that you might hear or read online. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are big culprits for having fake news on their feeds.

In order to put an end to the distribution of inaccurate facts and fake news stories, Facebook has done many things to block users from being able to change things such as headlines from stories, sharing fake content, and has even changed algorithms and user settings. They also deleted accounts that were contributing to this mess. And how were users getting away with distributing and posting fake news? Through the use of editable link previews.

"Link previews are the embeds that pop up when you post a link on Facebook. They usually contain a large thumbnail, the main URL where the link is from, the title of the post, and a short description of the article. Facebook auto-populates this information from the actual post image, headline, and description on the website being linked. It’s a visually pleasing way to show what would otherwise be a textual link (Mashable)."

After information, mostly revolving around the most recent presidential election, spread rapidly and inaccurately, Facebook got rid of the ability to edit these link previews. Much research has shown that social media users and the average reader does not take the time to click the link and read a full article. Instead they read what they see in the headline and keep scrolling. This made the need to get rid to this ability essential.

However, Facebook apparently forgot to account for link previews in private Facebook groups. According to a user, people are able to do this and still spread fake news stories. The company came out and said that they are working on how to combat this issue but that this group feature is an essential part of the engagement within the platform. Facebook hopefully will find a solution to these problems soon in order to relinquish the fake news that surrounds us each day. I have counted more times than none stories that contain a lot of inaccurate facts. And, although it is hard to filter what millions of people are posting, hopefully a solution will be created to stop this practice.

https://mashable.com/article/facebook-loophole-fake-news-link-preview/

The Workings of the U.S. Supreme Court

The Working's of the US Supreme Court 

The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court in our nation. Many noteworthy and important cases that have shaped our country have been decided within its walls. And, although many know that the actions of the court are important, they do not know and understand its workings. 

Cases that come to The Court start with a petition. This is from someone or a group of some sort that wishes to have their particular situation examined by the justices. Many of these petitions arrive at once, with roughly 7000 coming a year. Whats unique about our particular justice and higher court system is that each justices decide which petitions to discuss. people appeal to the court when they believe a decision in the lower court was wrong or somehow unconstitutional. In total, their are 9 justices with one being the Chief Justice. They are appointed by presidents and serve for life. Throughout the world, judicial court systems use our justice system and Supreme Court as an example on how to model their own system. 

The justices of The Court are given the responsibility to make ruling decisions based on whether or not they align with our countries constitution. Our constitution is more than 200 years old and it is The Courts overall duty to ensure that all actions, rulings, and laws in the United States are constitutional and fall within the bounds of whats written in the document. 

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court is viewed as an equal and important part of our government. They also ensure with the doing of checks and balances that Congress and members of the executive branch act in accordance with the law. Justices take pride in their work and review each case thoroughly. Meeting at least once a week, they take the time to decide which cases to bring before them. Many cases have been dealt a large hand of controversy, but the justices remain respectful and make rulings based on the written word of the constitution. 

The Court, in my opinion, has a big job and this country and a lot of responsibilities. They should make decisions based on what is written in The Constitution and based on past precedent. It is their duty to not let personal opinions interfere with their decision making. For this reason, it is important that before making a court judge selection, that candidates are investigated and thought to be the best ones to fulfill this duty. 
https://youtu.be/cWRoXYRsaeo