Dan Rather

From the late 1950's, when his career started, to when he retired in 2005, a lot has changed for Dan Rather. However, the most significant has been the changing dynamic of the media. According to Mr. Rather change is the main characteristic of the media. Even though a lot has transformed, Rather wishes that the amount of International attention would increase and believes that Geography in school has gone downhill.

Through the lecture a vast amount of information was given, for example, I never knew that the media's strength is to take the viewers to the scene, while depth and context is its weakness. I also learnt that the U.S. is still Eurocentric and we've done better in recent years but haven't yet understood that the historical center of gravity has moved from the Atlantic to the pacific.

The objective of the lecture was to the expose the changing dynamic of the media and how it keeps citizens informed. Those views were expressed when he talked about how the public is now more interested in entertainment rather than the news and if a program doesn't have a large amount of young audience members then it has a small chance of making it to the news.

I found this lecture extremely interesting because of all the knowledge that he had to share. For example, when he discussed his experiences in North Korea, how he was actually told that they had nuclear weapons and how they only released that information because they believe the U.S. is planning an attack. An additional issue that I found interesting was his thoughts of what's to come when he stated the future is more likely to be decided by if there is peace and war in North and South Asia.