Iranian President's Speech at Clumbia

The speech given by the Iranian president at Columbia University was definitely a controversial issue. The University was well within its rights to invite him to speak, but I think what most people are wondering is how smart of a decision it was to actually let him speak. Like President Bush said in the article, it’s a very good demonstration of freedom of speech in America. I don’t think many other governments would have allowed the president of a country that likely supported terrorism to speak at a University.
The speech at Columbia was almost entirely useless, in my opinion. The president of Iran refused to give a straight answer, and the president of Columbia merely took the opportunity to do some political pulling for himself. The entire thing reeked of publicity stunt. What the Iranian president’s words most emphasized was his contempt and attitude toward western powers, so the event was not an entire waste in terms of educating students. Mostly, I think Columbia University could have done a better job of facilitating the event.
I think that the staff and council members of Columbia who criticized the decision to invite the president of Iran to speak were a little out of place. Under better conditions, the benefit of his visit could have been great. I think it is fairly obvious to see what kind of potential there was for benefit from this situation. The visit was just not handled properly, so things escalated out of control quickly. In a way, I would say that the critics are partially responsible for this breakdown because their comments put the President of Columbia on the defense immediately.

Blog 1: Orsen Welles Scare

In this day and age, to frighten the nation's population in the manner Welles was able to would be nearly impossile. I think the main reasons why the radio broadcast was so frightening have become virtual non-issues.

Media Analysis is a huge contributor to this. People today don't automatically believe everything they see in the media. Our media literate population questions the truth behind what they hear through the media, even when it is accurate. THere is also the matter of education. In general, people today are more effeciantly educated than people in Welles' day. American's would look for authority and evidence to support the "disaster", and they would be more efficient at finding out that it was a ruse. Our methods of communications are more up to date, allowing the chain of information to grow rapidly util everyone was informed that the matter was not serious. I also believe that our producers would make more of an effort to advertise for their program, which would allow it to be billed as a fiction work, and not real. I also presume that if our media producers of today would not intentionaly try to scare our public. THey would fear the repercussions fromcritics and the public for obvious reasons cited in this link. THus they would aoid confusing the public beyond what was necessary to enjoy the broadcast. Finally, i think it would not take more than a few moments for today's government oto figure out what was going on and put a stop to any sign of "mass hysteria".