I am not quite proud to say that when I took the SPLC quiz, I got an 18/30. There were several questions that I found astonishing and some that were just confusing because sometimes words confuse me. The first questions that really threw me off was that government official can not establish a religion. I am not sure if this means that they can’t go to church or practice religion, I assume it does. In my opinion, government officials should be able to practice religion, but on a lower level. I’m not saying they should announce to the public and use their religion in every single argument and campaign they have, but they should still be able to practice their beliefs.

The second question that threw me for a loop was that a reporter can go to jail for refusing to not reveal their source. I think in the beginning I was thinking about big scandals that have come about where the journalist refuses to say names, but I didn’t think about a judge ordering them to say it. Now that I do have that in mind, this questions makes a lot more sense when I think about it.

A case from chapter 7 that caught my attention was the case involving the Red Cross. This case seemed like a round of “he said, she said” when it came to the Red Cross and the reporters at ProPublica. I found it interesting that the Red Cross insisted that the Head of the Mississippi Office of Emergency Management said nothing but nice things about their relief efforts, when the reporters had proof of Justin Elliot, executive director, saying the relief efforts were not as good as he expected them to be. It also shocked me that a charity with such a high reputation was so far below the line they drew for themselves, that people essentially expected this to happen.