Journal #2-- Erica Timmons

In an earlier class of mine we went off on a tangent about how news is delivered to it's audience. Our discussion primarily consisted of whether the news was fair and balanced or if it was purely facts. As we spoke about this I began to think of CNN and the news that I hear on TV and read about on Twitter. As much as I like CNN it seems that there is no news source that is purely factual. They all try to seem "fair and balanced". I say this because I'll hear the news anchors talking about Hillary Clinton and how they seem to take her side yet to make things fair and balanced they'll bring in a secretary of whatever and argue that Trump is a better candidate. This reminded me of when Bitzer stated that "rhetoric is a mode of altering reality...by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action." This is exactly what CNN does, they "mediate" discourse. This discourse is coming into existence due to a specific condition or situation like Britzer talks about. That situation is the presidential election. I feel as if Britzer would interpret these writings in the same way more or less being that once you analyze the text and look into it close enough you can interpret the media for what it really is which is a rhetorical piece of writing. I feel as if Edbauer would agree to a certain extent. Because Edbauer believes in the bigger picture as far as rhetoric goes she might only deem the media as rhetorical once it has an effect on who is elected to be the next president as well as that president's effect on the country. I feel as though she may disagree because she does mention that no single text can create a public. Edbauer explains that there is more that comes into play as far as rhetoric is concerned and that ethos-logos-pathos and speaker-audience models of communication are far too simple. She goes on to reference Phelps' critique  which states that active, lived, and historical processes also need to be considered. I find her theory to be a bit abstract and hard to observe where as I can more easily relate to and understand the theory that Bitzer explains.