Celebrity Child "Protection"

Well, besides Ted Cruz's filibuster (whether it was one or not), it has been a slow news week for the most part. So the only thing reletively interesting that has happened is that California has passed a bill aimed at paparaazi that says if you take a picture of a celebrity's child, you could go to jail. Now I'm not opposed to celebrities wanting their child's privacy protected, but to go as far as getting a bill passed to do it is funny. Actually, as I'm thinking about it, if I were a celebrity I think I would want my child protected from harassment and trauma. 

The fine for people who violate this new law can be a maximum of $10,000 and imprisonment to a max of one year in county jail. I'm sure these maximum penalities are for people who are charged multiple times for the offense but its still a lot of money.

I support this bill because the child is not the celebrity. The parents are the celebrities and they are the ones who should be harassed (between the two). Once the child decides they want to put themselves out there, either acting or modeling, and has made the mature decision to take paparazzi head on, then the press can go nuts. Otherwise, stay away from the children. Let them grow up with privacy.

Free Press

The role of the press in a free society is to cover news and broadcast important events to the people. They aren't completely free to do what they want but it seems like they keep their boundaries, and not go too far with things. There are some stories that shouldn't be covered by the press, like some celebrity personal issues, to tragic mass killings, to an extent. The press shouldn't interview anyone at the scene of a mass killing, it is inappropriate and reporters usually don't cross that line. 

Journalism is sometimes called the "rough draft" of history because they do not know the full truth of situations. Reporters won't ever know the full 100% of a story because they are querying information from multiple sources and trying to build a story off of it.

Whether its full truth or partial truth, I feel that free press is vital to our society in the US. Without free press there would be opportunity to censor our news coverage and we wouldn't get it as efficiently as today. With social media is great that we can see news of an event right after it happens.

Syria

So from what I understand, the killings in Syria started with protestors started challenging the government. The government's response is to kill their own civilians? It's really baffling to me that their government thought that murder was the best solution to the problem. Especially since now they've started a civil war. 

From the article "9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask" on The Washington Post, the writer brings up the fact that there are protests in lots a places and questions why it went so wrong in Syria. My theory with what I know is that its because of the dictator, Assad, and his connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. With how strict and psychopathic the radical Islamics are, it doesn't really surprise me. But Mr. Fisher (the author of the article) believes that the reason for the mass killings can't be pinned onto one thing. Syria has been a time bomb waiting to go off for decades and something about the protests in 2011 set it off. There is no arguing that the Syrian government overreacted to these protests but even then Assad learned this act of punishment from his father. 

One of the theories Mr. Fisher addresses to why Syria spiraled so quickly was because of the Fareed Zakaria case, where the CNN anchor recorded a video for a blogger explaining why he feels the US should NOT get involved in Syria's domestic problems. The other theory is just that the Assad regime was not sustainable and it was just on its downfall. 

Now for more recent events, I don't think Obama should be involved in Syria's problem. I'm sure we will have issues with getting natural resources in that area (assuming we get any from over there) but I would rather pay more for gas than piss off the Syrian's and radical Islamics. I'm sure there are so many more reasons that go too in-depth and are too complicated for me to understand but that's my two cents on Syria.