New Media Presidency

The YouTube Presidency - Virginia Heffernan

President Barack Obama is the first president to take advantage of the advances in the media. He is president during the times where everything can be found on the Internet and he know the importance of this. President Obama has connected greatly with the younger generation and this is because of his use of the technologies such as YouTube. Virginia Heffernan explains how the Obama presidency has created a new staff devoted to managing President Obama's appearances on the Internet.

Heffernan also explains that President Obama always has a prompter for when he makes any type of speech. Many may find fault in this by thinking that by using the prompter we don't really get to see the real side of President Barack. "He's almost never caught winging it." I believe that it is good that he uses a teleprompter, it leaves no room for mistakes.

President Obama is also the first President to be on a late night television show. President Obama is using all of these as techniques to create a more personable presidency, and it is working. Now when one YouTube's President Obama there are so may videos that come up and this gives the people more access to knowing what our president has to say. He is starting a good trend for leaders to come.

Trying to put it into perspective....

On April 29th, a representative of Wal-Mart came to SUNY Old Westbury to talk with students about the history and ethics of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, which is one of the biggest corporations in America, has always been under the radar when it comes to their relationship with their employees. It is a job that is not recognized in any labor union, so wages and benefits are extremely limited.

Steven Restivo, the Director of Corporate Affairs in the Northeast Region of Wal-Mart, did a great job describing the history and the overview of Wal-Mart. He was not afraid of telling our class how Wal-Mart operates. Public relations can be an extremely stressful job. He cannot help but feel as if he were "under attack".

Even though he tried to convince our class Wal-Mart is not as bad as it seems, that is his main job. He is basically "selling us" the idea of embracing Wal-Mart. When questions of workers overseas came up, he hesistated and couldn't answer some of our questions. Being in Public Relations has to deal with the public, which can turn against you very quickly.

Wal-Mart: A family company?

"Big business in America is both admired and instinctively suspected, and the biggest business of all is a natural magnet for criticism. The overwhelming focus lately has been its health-care policy, which covers fewer than half its workers and leaves the government to care for tens of thousands of its em-ployees and their children through programs, like Medicaid, that were created to help poor people." Joshua Green " The new war over Wal-Mart"

Wal-Mart's advertisements depict a sense of well being for families, and taking care of everyday people, yet they do not provide the health care and salaries to support their own employees. Wal-Marts slogan " Saving people money so they can live better" seems to be hypocritical when one looks at the way their employee's have to live. Many of Wal-Marts employees have had to look to the government to seek finacial help "so that they can live better." Their employees cannot even support their own families due to low salaries and lack of benefits, yet they depict an image of family values. Is walmart really a family company if theycannot help their employees support their families, seems a bit hypocritical.