Students who watch television are perhaps unaware of the importance of the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s call for more troops on Jan. 10.

However, Cerritos students say that when it comes to watching the news on television about what is going on not only in Iraq but also around the world, it is in fact important to them besides watching reality-based shows.

For Cythnia Carranza, political science major, there is an importance to watching the news but she doesn’t criticize the media for its coverage of news happening around the world.

“What happens is that the news channels give world news only about five minutes of coverage,” she explained, “but when it comes to local news it is more than a half an hour of coverage.”

Martha Macias, sociology major, agreed.

According to Student Monitor, a market research firm that focuses on college student television habits, in 2004, students were watching an average of 11.2 hours of television a day. But the shows they watched were television series like “The Simpsons.”

Although Macias doesn’t have cable or rarely watches television she added that in the beginning of the Iraq war, the news coverage would only show what the audience see and there were things about the war that we weren’t allow to see.

“When I do watch the regular television like PBS there are good documentaries that are aired,” she said.

“There is more to news than just the Iraq war,” she continued, “but what about genocide that occurs everyday in Darfur?”

In addition, she also questioned the recent news coverage of British soccer star David Beckman, who will be coming to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team. To her, she said that the news media is obsessed with celebrities.

George Paz, undecided major, said that the only reason that the media is always covering the lives of celebrities is because it is all about television ratings.

In the Student Center the only channel that is shown is MTVU. According to Holly Bogdanovich, director of student activities, she says that Cerritos has a corporate contract with MTVU.

To have MTVU as the only channel shown in the Student Center, Carranza said that it doesn’t bother her because she said that the channel doesn’t only play music videos but does reports on news happening around the world.

Rosa Vega, business major, and Ariana Esquiuel, undecided major, said that the channel is only there for students to listen to what is happening and enjoy music, but they both don’t see what the big deal is.

That is not the way that Keatrin Harris, undecided major, sees the reason why the MTVU channel is always on.

“Whether it is MTV or MTVU, the channel is used as a platform for a political stance,” he explained, “and also it is all about the money that is received for having television ads.”

Vega, Esquiuel, Carranza and Harris do say that there are students who don’t care about what is happening in the world and only focus on their studies.

They said it is those students who should care because who knows if there could be a draft implemented one day.