Mentor Assessment #2

Mentor: Mr. Bill Pasha

Location and Business Name: The MBMI Companies

Date of Meeting: March 22, 2017

Time: 12:45 P.M.

Today I met with Mr. Pasha once again in his office to learn more about his
work, his experiences, and advice on pursuing business as a career. First off, I gave
him an update about the progress I made on my original work and final product. I
updated him and told him how I collected all the highlight reels I wanted to use for
the recruiting video, and how I am getting ready for the next step, which is to take
a camera and record interviews from the athlete, coaches, parents, etc. I asked for
his recommendations on what editing software to use as I am really inexperienced
with them, and he recommended I look up online the best one that can fit for me
and my work.

After our recap of my original work, we began a conversation about a new

topic that was different from what we typically talk about. He began with talking
about how his company was soon to promote a new app called Soundmite, a
program that he describes as an audio-Twitter. Basically, the app takes editorial
content like news articles, and headlines and compreses them to a 21 second
soundbite. So if a subscriber listens to around 60 of them a day, in 20 minutes he
can receive a sufficient amount of news material. This prompted me to ask him
about the problem of news media today, since I understood that many people find it
a problem that they are being fed news in such short amounts of time and
companies are shoving as much news content as they can in a short amount of
time, and thus losing a lot of the good qualities of authentic journalism. This
question resulted in an eye-opening discussion and lead to me learning a lot.

Mr. Pasha used to be a news media executive, so he has had a considerable

experience in the media world. He understood my question and confirmed that
there was a problem today with real, authentic news and fake news being placed
together in so many different platforms and on the internet today, that people are
falling to believe the fake news content. This is an unavoidable fact of the news
media field today; that different people are fighting to get their stories viewed
more, and most of the time to promote an agenda. He believes that this turning of
the news began during the hearings of Joseph McCarthy, and his fearmongering in
America about the danger of invading communists in America and within the
government. These hearings really set into motion about how different news
outlets related this news content, a controversial hot topic at the time.

It is no secret that the major news networks are biased. With MSNBC being
towards the left, CNN more moderate left and FOX towards the right for example,
they have their ways of relating news content that are fit to their views. He
proceeded to give me several examples of how the media networks have influenced
the public views and society with their agendas with their tricks and
manipulations. For example, when John McCain and Sarah Palin was running for
office in 2008, Saturday Night Live made a skit about Palin, who is from Alaska and
focused on a specific interview she had recently. In that interview, she said that
from her residence, the Russian border was 22 miles across the ocean, but then
SNL took that and changed her words to I can see Russia from my backyard,
which resulted in public shaming and changing views about her intelligence,
perceiving that she really made those comments. Another example Mr. Pasha gave
was when he was working for Westinghouse, a company that was involved with
many different things from news to household appliances, and even military
equipment. In 1991, during the Gulf War, at some points when military equipment
by Westinghouse was used by the U.S., instead of reporting it as for example,
American bombers were used in the invasion of this city, they would report it as
B-1 bombers, which was in a way promoting their brand. That one example
shows how news is changed to fit the wants of the ones reporting it.

How do the problems with news media connect with the business world?
Turns out a lot. A lot of political issues and media are significant to the business
world, Mr. Pasha said. For example, just yesterday, the Wall Street markets like
DOW fell a lot in their points most likely due to the FBI hearings the day before
concerning the President and his activities. The actions of policy makers and the
stories that come in through the media really can have an effect on business
activities and decisions, both in the short run and in the long run. Thats why
inaccurate news can have damaging effects in the business world, because with
inaccurate information and headlines, comes faulty decisions and actions.

Today, I learned how much the media and politics can affect the business
world and just how dangerous the inaccuracies and biases of the media they can
be.