MCOM 4003 - Katherine Ledbetter

 Plagiarism in College Sports You've all seen a show or movie that shows college athletes who have other students that do their schoolwork for them. In reality, collegiate athletes have a strict reputation to uphold. At Southern Arkansas most athletes are required a team study hall and coaches even go as far as to punish their athletes for missing classes. Athletes stay under the watchful eyes of their professors, coaches, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA). The NCAA even has a Promoting and Protecting Academic Integrity compliance section on their website; they take academic misconduct very seriously. Being involved with the NCAA, student athletes not only risk backlash with a university for plagiarism, they also risk athletic ineligibility and the future of their careers. Even with scrutinous eyes upon them, some student athletes still attempt to find their way around the rules. In 2014, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after an investigation...

History Always Repeats Itself       If you care about your health, you need to go buy a pack of cigarettes RIGHT NOW. Buy a pack of Viceroys if you care to be healthy- your dentist recommends them! How could you say no to a cigarette; a doctor told you to buy them, they have to be good for you! The Federal Trade Commission Act prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. Advertisements must not mislead consumers or leave out relevant information. Before this Act came about, cigarette companies used to advertise their products through the most ridiculous and untrue promotional practices, deceiving the public into thinking they were healthy. I want to focus on that word- deception. Cigarette ads were focused solely on deception, whether or not the companies acknowledged that or not. They wanted to get to the top and outsell their competitors. Through this, their advertising practices became deceptive. In 1937,  the Philip Morris company claimed  ...

Drama! Drama! Read All About It!      One of my core memories from my childhood was being in the checkout like at the supermarket and watching my mom turn all of the magazines and newspapers at the front around. As a child I always thought she was being outrageous, but looking back at it, she had the purest of intentions trying to shield my young innocent eyes from the images and headlines that these supermarket tabloids depicted. Tabloids used be simple  small newspapers "that contained condensed storied hat were easily read by everyday readers". This innocent definition became contaminated once stories of scandals, graphic crime, and celebrity news became the focus of these newspapers.      People access news from their phones, and have almost no need for paper copies. This change in the way Americans access news has drastically affected the circulation of supermarket tabloids. Surprisingly, tabloids still occupy a place in American culture as well ...

Biased News and the Increasing Divide Between Political Parties      FAKE NEWS! America knows this as former president Trump's favorite catchphrase. It was his way of 'calling bulls***', especially when it came to claims regarding himself. He used this phrase so much that by the end of his presidency, every time he claimed something was fake news, it seemed as though he was 'crying wolf'. Despite the over usage of this phrase, news today, especially when it comes to cable news, can skew severely biased, bordering on the line of completely fake news.       It is common knowledge that  Fox News and CNN are on the complete opposite sides of the spectrum from one another, with Fox skewing severely 'right' and CNN skewing severely 'left'. Instead of providing the public with 100% real helpful news, cable news sources care about pulling in the most viewers and unintentionally create a larger divide between the American people. In order to keep their spe...