Writing 1122
Naitong Li
Feb 27, 2012
Multiple News Times
During recent ten years, people create out many amazing
things. Among them, a series of production of one company is outstanding. Since
2002, after a big change and breakthrough, the productions of this company
become popular around the world. Their simple but beautiful designs make people
fall in love with them easily. Different from other similar products, they use
Monotone colors and an almost unchanged design to track many people’s eyes
successfully. Fashion people look them like a label of avant-grade. They are a
sign of success in some countries. In some degree, they represent wealth and
social status, and aesthetic force. As
the hottest products in the world, they have fans in every country. People are keen
on speculating of its next generation products, and waiting for them. Guessing the new functions of the products
becomes a game around the world. So
every time a new kind of products appears on the market, it will appeal many
people to wait before the door so that they can buy them at the first time.
They sales very well even they are more expensive than other similar products. They
use just a few years to occupy the most part of the market in this area, and
become a legend in the commercial world.
Now, it is very easy to guess what the products are, yes, they are the
products of “i” series: Ipod, Itouch, Iphone Ipad and Imac.
Because they are so popular in the world, there is lots of
news of them every day. Almost every piece of the related news will become the
headlines on that day. The New York Times even has the special topics for both
the Apple incorporated company and their former CEO, Jobs Steve. Many people write on their blogs to analysis
it from different angles. If we follow this news for a period of time, we will
find out a strange phenomenon. We will discover that even we know there is only
one company called Apple in the world, but after we read the newspaper, watch
TV, read magazines, and search for the Internet to follow its news, we may
confused by the contents and think there may be a lot of Apple companies in the
world. Each one has different characters.
Recently, a report on New York Times attracted much attention;
it was called “In China, Human Costs Are Built into an Ipad.” The main purpose
of this report is to show the horrible work condition and low salary for the
Chinese labors who work in the Apple’s suppliers, Foxconn. It writes the work
situation in China, and the relationship between Apple Company and its
suppliers. Many people read the terrible work conditions and Apple’s ineffective
protection policy in these factories from this article. A lot of people start
to blame Apple for that they have no human rights, and very mercenary. It
becomes a new challenge for the Apple’s model of industrial. But when we look back, we can think of that,
in our mind, Apple often represents the world’s most advanced model of
industrial. It is one of the most commercial cases in the world, and many
people admire Steven Job’s individual talent. So it seems like there are two
Apples companies in the world, one is represent cold-blooded, ruthless, and
mercenary, the other one is represent smart, creative, and passion. Which one
is the real Apple? Who we should believe? And what’s make them such different?
At first, we may feel confused by these questions, and can’t answer them.
Actually, if we pay attention to the people we get this really different
information from, the questions will be very easy to answer. In addition, if we
look an article from a business analysis report written by a business
consultancy or interview an economics, we will have a deep feeling of the
success of Apple’s Company. They would
say that Apple has the word most developed production model, and it represents
the biggest trend of the world economic pattern: economic integration. It
choose America as its new technologies research and development place so that
they can take advantages of the advanced scientific and technical personnel
there, and it is more helpful for them to protect the property rights for the
new technologies. Meanwhile, they choose developing countries, such China and
India, who has rich human resources and cheap labor to assemble the products in
order to keep the cost low and get more net profits. Of course opponents or
their adversaries think from a totally different angle; they may say Apple built
their profits on others’ blood. Their products are like a trap, because at once
you buy one product, you should by a lot of related things in the following
time.
Even for the biggest problem— the work condition in its
suppliers, different people still have different description. Like In 2010, Steven P. Jobs discussed the
company’s relationships with suppliers at an industry conference. “I actually
think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry, and
maybe in any industry, of understanding the working conditions in our supply
chain,” said Mr. Jobs, who was Apple’s chief executive at the time and who died
last October. “I mean, you go to this place, and, it’s a factory, but, my gosh,
I mean, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming
pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory.” (New York Times) What’s more, in order to
refute the complaints advanced by the human rights advocates of its overtime
work requirements and the fatigue of standing work style, a spokesman of Apple
company said that “All assembly line employees are given regular breaks,
including one-hour lunch breaks,” the company wrote, and only 5 percent of
assembly line workers are required to stand to carry out their tasks. Work
stations have been designed to ergonomic standards, and employees have
opportunities for job rotation and promotion, the statement said. (New York
Times)
If you only read news contains these
speeches, you may feel the factory is not bad as the opponents said.
But the dissent said that the real
fact seems far from what the leaders in Apple said. It is true that the
factories has restaurants and hospitals, but that just because the workers here
are living in the factories, these infrastructures can let them waste less time
on those things. As for the swimming pools and movie theaters, they are more
like decorations, because the workers are too tired to use them after work.
What’s worse, the regular rest time is very short, and nearly all people take
rest at a same time, so it is even hard to walk outside the factory. And the lunch time is only one hour, which is
very short to eat in a healthy rate. Moreover, the spokesman of Apple Company
never mentions that the workers usually need to work seven days a week without
additional salary. Besides, the opponents use a piece news to show the security
situation in Foxconn, that is two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier
in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous
chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions
at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. At
this time, if you read news and blogs written by opponents, you may think the
Apple Company is really inhumanly.
From this example, we can clearly
feel that how differences a same fact can be reported by different people from
different angles. They are all right, no one fabricate facts, what they do is
just choose one point of view to write the news so it can service their final goals.
Even what the opponents said, which seems more close the truth, still have more
problems. They don’t show the total work condition in China, the average
salary, and we don’t know the example they use is weather often happen or it is
a common problem in the whole China. Because News is service for the people, so different people
can see different things from one event and write in totally different points,
as a result, they send really different information and feelings to the public.
This situation is very common in our daily life. Just for the same example, for
the Apple’s production model, Obama use a totally new angle which is different from
the leaders and the opponents. What he said is that the Apple should bring
their factories back to America so that it can provide more work opportunities
to solve the employment crisis. Why he said this is of course because he is the
present, to solve to employment problem is his biggest responsibility.
There is a fable in China called
blind people touch an elephant. It tells a story that let four people who never
see elephant to touch an elephant and describe it, but they can’t see it.
Because each one just touches a part of the elephant, after they do that, they
get different conclusions. The one who touches the elephant’s ears thinks an
elephant looks like a fan, the one who touches the leg think it likes a pillars,
the one who touches the body think it likes a wall, and the last one, who touches
the tail, think it likes a cord. So no one get the real answer. I think this
story can greatly describe the situation of our news bulletin reports. If one
chooses one part to describe the whole event, it must be not very accurate and
contain his own speculation. It will mislead the readers a lot. But sometimes
they must choose one point to report for some reasons. Even people want to
report an even in a total impersonality way and show the real facts, it is
still very hard, because every have different experience and thoughts.
So in this multiple news time, as a
reader we should pay attention to what we read, and think issues in a
dialectical way. Just in this way, we can figure out what the real world is,
and treat the world in a right way.
Interesting topic! :)
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