The Political Consequences of Suspending Disbelief

Those who have studied media literacy know the concept of “the suspension of disbelief.”

Here’s how it works. When we read fiction, watch films and most TV drama, we shut down our disbelief and critical abilities. We permit ourselves to accept fiction as being true. How can we enjoy fiction if we are constantly telling ourselves it’s not “true”?

And so we “accept” lies of a sort. At its best, fiction becomes “art” and reveals larger truths. At its worst, and all too often, it is a lie appealing to our baser instincts. If we have suspended our disbelief, we often can’t, or won’t, appreciate the difference.

The suspension of disbelief comes at the cost of making us vulnerable. We find it difficult and even impossible to switch back to critical thinking after hours of having shut it down.

That’s why advertising, with all its visual and associative manipulation, is so effective. We actually believe if we buy this car or that soap, we will be better, just like the “beautiful people” in the ads. We carry these fictions into the market place and put our money on them.

Enter Donald Trump (and most other candidates for that matter). They hit us with their advertising when we are most vulnerable to its distortions (grainy footage, patriotic symbols, reassuring voices, creepy music etc.).

Trump does his distorting largely without advertising because he is, at root, a oddly and crudely engaging performer. Those who are most unquestionably believing of him become “true believers.” They idolize him, accepting uncritically whatever he says – even when he contradicts himself, even when he offends and demeans “others.”

In so many ways, Trump is no more harsh, cruel or obscene than much of popular media today. Note that he speaks in the truncated, venom-laced language of the internet.

In short, Trump’s behavior is made to order for our media culture. Those who have become immersed in it (and many watch TV or are glued to the internet for hours on end) feel right at home with a bullying, bigoted, thoughtless brute. (Rush Limbaugh also comes to mind....)

Trump, like much of media, plays upon and amplifies the dark, fearful, hateful, violent side of life. (There’s even a name for the phenomenon: “The Mean World Syndrome.” (vis. the late George Gerbner.)

if you can’t, or won’t, return to a questioning state of disbelief (which, be warned, requires work), you find yourself accepting distorted, outrageous and even immoral solutions.

Exploring the real causes of problems facing us just doesn’t lend itself to 30-second TV spots and 140-word tweets. Besides, who wants to know that we ourselves are part of the problem and will have to change?

Why else would global warming be seemingly unworthy of public discourse in this campaign?

Instead, sound bite “solutions” (torture, walls, intolerance) threaten to make  "real world" life for all of us and our progeny worse…much, much worse.

MediaThink's legacy

More than a decade ago I signed up to be part of a new non-profit called the Northwest Media Literacy Center. Because the name was a mouthful, to say nothing of slightly pretentious, we changed it to "MediaThink."

Over the years we put on dozens of presentations, primarily for parents worried that their children were being "media-napped" by texting, product placements, video games and cartoons.

But MediaThink's numbers never expanded beyond a core group of about six. Over time, the group couldn't sustain itself even though the need for critically assessing media became bigger and more complex than ever.

At least a couple of us felt that the rapid, overwhelming changes in media technology were simply beyond the mastery and understanding of our generation. Then too — surprise, surprise — we never got the attention of the media.

So at the end of last year, the group decided to call it quits. Its one active project was a self-directed, Northwest Earth Institute-style course for parent groups. We called it "The Media Mindful Family" and parceled it out to The Media Literacy Project in New Mexico. MLP has promised to carry it forward.

There's still a huge need for a media literacy organization in Portland (and everywhere for that matter). Several organizations have taken an interest locally: Kaiser Permanente, the state PTA, the Oregon Council for the Humanities, The Oregon Pediatric Society and the Heart Association. Yes, there are health consequences to a "bad media diet." Start with one word: "addiction."

One of the legacies of our our now defunct group is a contact list of national media literacy organizations. Their web sites are worth exploring. Sharing the contacts with you seems to be a fitting farewell to MediaThink.

ACME Coalition
http://www.acmecoalition.org/

Media Literacy Project (formerly NMMLP)
http://medialiteracyproject.org/

Center For Media Literacy
http://www.medialit.org/

Just Think
http://justthink.org/

Media Awareness Network
http://www.media-awareness.ca/

Media Education Foundation
http://www.mediaed.org/

Media Literacy Clearinghouse
www.frankwbaker.com/default1.htm

Media Education Lab
http://mediaeducationlab.com/index.php

Media Literacy Online Project
http://mlop.proscenia.net/

Google TV: Targeting Kids and other Intended Consequences

The introductory ad for Google TV is titled "Kids Again."

It has left out a word, "Targeting."

"Targeting Kids Again."

The very first line in the copy gets to the point: "We haven't been this excited about TV since Saturday morning cartoons."

Exactly.

Saturday morning cartoons are certainly something to get excited about. Captive, malleable minds. Endless advertising opportunities for sugary junk food and plastic trinkets.

Diabetes gets another boost among kids. We can be sure Big Pharma is really excited about Google TV.

Want to see health care costs soar?

How about violence without end. Think of all those new privatized, tax-supported prisons we can build when the new generation of Googled Kids move into being Googled felons.

Hey, Tea Party-ers, how about it? If you're so concerned about values, what do you say to an outfit like Google that is so "excited" about undermining the health and values of the next generation?

Right, right. It's all about the glories of the unregulated free market. Keep big government's mitts of this. Down with the "Nanny State"!

If kids want to spend hours in front of Google TV downing chips and cola rather than visiting parks to explore nature or playgrounds to shoot hoops and climb jungle gyms, it's their choice.

It certainly isn't their parents'. Moms (or, if you are lucky, Moms and Dads) are too busy trying to escape foreclosure, pay the rent and hold down minimum wage jobs.

So give the parents a break. Let them turn "parenting" over to Google TV and the "excitement" of a screen-centered childhood.

Thanks Google...for thinking inside the box. Again.

Finally, consider the ad's tag line. It's the really scary part: "The coolest thing about Google TV is that we don't even know what the coolest thing about it will be."

How cool is that? Not very.

Just think, more new technology without a clue as to what it will do. Brilliant.

Of course, Google knows exactly what the "coolest" thing will be about Google TV. Piles of money made at the expense of the next generation of kids.

Media must teach Media Literacy

For several years I’ve worked to spread the “Media Literacy” gospel. But starting a couple of years ago, my interest began to wane.

Media literacy sets out to get the citizenry thinking “critically” about media and its impact on us, as individuals, as a community, as a society and as pebble in space.

It also encourages us to act on our findings.

Laudable objectives all. So why have I drifted away from the movement?

I haven’t given myself the opportunity to explore the answer to that question. The short answer, I suppose, is that other things came up. Another more compelling answer is that media literacy, despite its importance, has never seemed to gained much traction.

But why?

A List of Questions and Answers

This week I was confronted with these questions in another form by a colleague in the media literacy movement. Erik Vidstrand first pulled me into the media literacy orbit when he founded the Northwest Media Literacy Center, now called Media Think.

This week Erik invited me to join him for two You Tube discussions about Media Literacy. I declined but promised to address a list of questions he sent.

In trying to answer them, I found myself exploring my flagging relationship to the media literacy movement.

So here are my answers to the the most challenging questions on Erik’s list.

What does media literacy mean in 2010?
It continues to mean questioning content and assessing media’s motives and impact. Literacy results from an awareness of several principles, the most telling being “All media messages are constructed.” Who is constructing this message? Why? For whom? etc.
But media literacy is about more than the messages. It’s about media themselves, as separate from content. How does each new medium (Twitter, texting, Facebook, iPad etc.) change us as human beings? How does it change what we do with our time, with how we relate to each other? Media shape and define us. We need to be aware of how and what should and can be done about it.

Has the ability to access on-demand multimedia changed the conversation over media literacy?
I’m not sure there was a “conversation” to begin with. And if there was, I don’t know what it was. If anything has changed conversations in the past decade it’s not the on-demand nature multi-media. It’s the interactive aspect of the internet. We now can talk back to media. Indeed, all that talk becomes powerful content. It’s a sprawling, messy “conversation” writ very, very large.


What is the responsibility of the public when it comes to checking the "credentials" of a media source, including blogs, legacy media and podcasts?
The question implies a public responsibility. The first responsibility rests with the communicator, not the audience. Today that first responsibility is crumbling. Money has always motivated communicators, communication and messages. It only gets worse as media expand.
And credibility, fairness and civility are less and less valued largely because they are money losers.
Today media are largely about entertainment — often masquerading as “information.” The public has given up on making distinctions between journalism and entertainment. Along the way, the susceptible have bought into preposterous, anger-inducing claims.
What’s the need to be responsible when the media assumptions have nothing to do with responsibility. Does entertainment, as opposed to journalism, need to be responsible?

What are the impacts of citizen journalism on society?
We need to teach journalism as a fundamental skill — like arithmetic and reading — so that future citizens can create it and assess it responsibly. In general, citizen, watch-dog journalism has made “professional” journalism better.

With the rise of hyper-local journalism due to the continuing decay of international and even national news coverage, whose responsibility is it to inform the public?
The rise of hyper-local journalism is possible because of technology, not the decay of international and nation coverage. The decline of the latter has more to do with economics of journalism and drive for ever higher profits in the industry.
We all have a responsibility to inform the public of matters that have serious consequences to us. Those matters may be happening as far away as Afghanistan or as close to home as our neighborhood’s preparedness for disaster.

As media have become largely a series of sound bites, what is the modern value of extensive and detailed coverage on important new and cultural issues?
I don’t agree with the premise that “media have become largely a series of sound bites.” The internet allows us to probe for information at great depth. The problem is that we don’t use that capacity. Instead, we stop with the superficial. Media now presents “bursts” of information and has conditioned us to having flea-like attention spans. And that means we have trouble connecting information, or following an argument. As noted, media have changed us and how we receive and process information.

What are three guiding principles for the public to apply when assessing the media?
I don’t know about principles, but here are a few questions: Ask whether what you are seeing or reading is true. Is it creating a “false reality”? Is it “enemy-making”? Is it making you unduly afraid? Complacent? Dangerously angry? Is it appealing to your intellect? To your emotions? Is it harmful to your physical and mental health? Is it beneficial? Is it a waste of your time and energy?
Consume media with a constructive purpose. Never consume it because you “have nothing else to do.” You always have something else to do. Do it!

Answering my own question

In answering Erik’s questions, I see that I haven’t answered my own. Why have I drifted away from the media literacy movement?

I think it is largely because media control the agenda and the public consciousness, and the one thing media don’t want is to have media literacy on that agenda.

The great media critic Neil Postman wrote at the end of his classic “Amusing Ourselves to Death” that the only hope for a change in awareness about media is for media literacy to be part of the educational curricula.

But as I write this, schools and education are losing in competition to personalized, fragmented, pervasive media.

I predict that in 10 years virtually all classes will be on-line. Students won’t be taught by flesh-and-blood teachers but, at best, by images of teachers — and images of the world. And an image world, as we have seen, is quite different from the real one. Likewise “image teachers.” Students must be able to make the distinction between the two worlds, but will they be taught to? I doubt it.

McLuhan famously noted that the medium is the message. It may be worse than that: In a media-saturated world, the medium is reality.

To change reality, change the medium. Or better yet, experience reality directly, media free. On those occasions when you do expose yourself to media and their messages, compare them to what you know to be true from your direct experience of the world.

Media managers, of course, have no reason to spread the profit-threatening media literacy message.

Until there is one, or until it is required (like warnings on cigarette packs), media literacy will be adrift.

Disney deception leads to 'Baby Einstein' refund offer

Those of us in the media literacy movement are elated that The Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood has pressured the Walt Disney Company to retract educational claims about "Baby Einstein," the DVD that Diney has implied will make infants smarter.

Now the company has been backed into the position of offering full refunds on the hyped "Baby Einstein" product.

Here's today's New York Times story on the refund offer.

Now some of us with friends who are parents of little ones are getting push back. Parents who have used the DVD as pacifiers on their infants are reacting defensively.

That's a story in itself.

These are clearly the same parents who don't follow pediatricians' advice that no child under two should watch any TV. Zero.

Apparently the parents have put more faith in Bambi and Dopey than they have in their own doctors.

Editor backs anti-junk food campaign

Marie Sherlock, the editor of Portland’s Metro-Parent magazine, understands the importance of teaching kids media literacy.

She has posted an astute entry on the magazine’s blog HERE.

It congratulates the Nutrition Council of Oregon for a recent campaign fighting junk food and the associated health hazards it poses to our children.

Here is one of the Council’s ads:


I was moved to respond to Marie’s post with this.

Great post.

My first thought is that children shouldn't be confronted with ads for junk food in the first place. Most of them are on children's TV programing. Others are in grocery stores in the form of "feel good" packaging. The products are often "tied-in" to TV programing and advertising.

The "help" we can give our children is to get rid of the TV. In the store, introduce children to nutrition labels and the false impression left by packaging and its commercial labels.

The only choices a child should have about food should come from responsible parents.

What mouse?

Media literacy teachers have promulgated various lists of “principles.” The lists always overlap to some extent, and without fail they include some variation on “no two people see the same image (or message) in exactly the same way.”

That seems as obvious as it is profound. We all bring our own unique associations and experiences to what we see. Accordingly, it is important to check perceptions, which is why after seeing a film we often ask, “Did you like it? What did you think of it?”

Recently I’ve wanted to add another dimension to the principle.

Each of us as individuals never sees the same image or message the same way twice. That’s because individually we change over time and location.

How would you perceive a glass of water if you were swimming in a fresh water lake? How would you perceive the very same image if you were in the middle of the desert?

How do you view a picture of Mickey Mouse as child? How do you see the same picture as an adult?

So in addition to checking perceptions with others, we need to check them internally, with ourselves. We need to repeatedly revisit what we have seen and what we think we know.

There’s much more to the principle beyond how each viewer perceives an image or a message.

The maker of the image or message must ponder the work from an unknowable multitude of perspectives of individuals in the audience. And not just how the audience members might perceive it today or tomorrow but in the unending (and unknowable) future.

And not just here but elsewhere, in radically different climates and cultures.

Attention Disney: As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya in the mid-Sixties, I occasionally showed Mickey Mouse cartoons to my students. Afterwards I'd check perceptions of the famous mouse. To which many in the audience looked perplexed and responded, "What mouse?" Ever see a mouse wearing shoes, pants, gloves?

It’s a wonder we can communicate at all.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Media Fasting

Recently I assigned my community college students to put themselves through a one-day media fast.

No TV, no Internet, no cell phones, no iPods etc.

As I’ve discovered when I’ve done this before, the fast is either life-affirming, stimulating and eye-opening — or it is boring, isolating and even agonizing. One student this year worried that the fast was driving her crazy.

Almost all the students reacted to the fast in extremes.

I always ask whether the fast makes them feel more, or less, “in touch.”

Only a few say the fast puts them in touch — with themselves. Those who complain that the fast has made them “lose touch with the world” don’t explore what being “in touch with the world” means. They assume that media images and messages portray the world as it is.

Some are so traumatized by not having access to media that all they can think of is napping. If they aren’t working, they are consuming media, or sleeping. Cut out media in their off-work hours and their only conceivable choice is sleeping.

For a couple, cleaning their apartments was an option, but simply to “pass the time.”

It would seem that millions of young people have their lives defined by media. They no longer know who we are in relationship to the non-mediated world, nor do they care. They have truly "lost touch."

They believe that media involvement constitutes awareness.

And each year, more and more media distractions consume the lives of my students. This year’s group reported yearning for their iPods, cell phones and video games.

*********

Here are two representative reactions (I’ve changed the names of the authors):

(During the fast) you learn more about yourself instead of about everyone else in the world. It was definitely good “me time.” I wrote down a lot of thoughts as well. I felt spiritual, yet out of touch. “Media avoidance day” definitely had its ups and downs, but overall I know it was good for me.

I wrote a lot and I love to write. … There wasn’t always someone in my ear brain-washing me, or informing me of every little thing. I was very in touch with myself, and out of touch with society. I really liked this assignment and would definitely do it again.

Alice


Without paying attention to the media we lose contact with our society, its most current thoughts or trends. It becomes harder to relate to more people and, while many of us feel isolated watching TV at home alone, we are really stitching ourselves closer to this society — a society of media and technology.

Becky

Obama to parents: Turn off TV, put away video games

Note in passing: President Obama made one of the strongest, most widely heard appeals ever for media literacy in his speech before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

Here's what he said:

….education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them. In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a parent -- for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, read to their child. (Applause.) I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father, when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home. That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. That's an American issue.

There is a silver bullet after all

The New York Times Science section ran a story today that confirms what those of us in the media literacy movement have been saying for years: Get the frigging TV (and computer) out of your kid's room.

Why?

The story — and the research — lists the reasons.

An "Essential Skill" for the 21st Century

One of the most “information-rich” sites devoted to media literacy is Frank Baker’s. He occasionally looks in on my media literacy musings here to comment and counsel.

As you will see when you visit his site, Frank has been a prime mover in persuading schools to offer media literacy to kids.

Here in Oregon, the subject is barely beginning to get much needed attention. The media literacy movement has begun with a handful of parents, teachers and activists, including health-care professionals concerned about health consequences of excessive screen time.

School district administrators and officials have been largely out to lunch. When they get back, the rest of us would like them to sit down for a chat and a strategy session.

We might invite Frank to join us.

The State Board of Education is circulating a draft of “essential skills,” which would be phased in and required of all high school graduates, starting with current 8th graders when they graduate in 2012.

The skill that comes closest to media literacy (without explicitly saying so) tops the list. It reads:

1. Read and comprehend a variety of text* at different levels of difficulty. This skill includes all of the following:
• Demonstrate the ability to read and understand text.
• Summarize and critically analyze key points of text, events, issues, phenomena or problems, distinguishing factual from non-factual and literal from inferential elements.
• Follow instructions from informational or technical text to perform a task, answer questions, and solve problems.

* Text includes but is not limited to all forms of written material, communications, media, and other representations in words, numbers, and graphics and visual displays using traditional and technological formats

The term “text,” an academic term of art, can confuse and obscure. Notice that television, computers, cellphones and the internet are not mentioned although our children, on average, spend five to six hours a day with them.

A couple of other "skills" listed in the draft apply broadly, namely:

#5. Think critically and analytically across disciplines

and

#6. Use technology to learn, live, and work

There is a link to a full description of the draft diploma skills on a survey that I mention at the end of this post.

The point is this: We need desperately to talk and teach about communication in all its forms, including — and perhaps especially — omnipresent visual communication.

That’s where Frank Baker, our own local Media Think and other media literacy advocacy groups come in.

We must press Oregon school administrators, elected public officials and the Oregon Department of Education to establish media literacy as an “essential skill” for citizens in this century.

If you want to weigh in on this issue, go to the “Essential Skills” survey that the state department of education has put online.

Seeing is believing — or is it?

Do birds, squirrells and coyotes sing together in Jeep Liberties?

Will adding something called Benefiber to your diet make you look like a supermodel?

Will a kid’s head be blown off by the yoghurty taste of Fizzix?

Will a bored “Neopet,” a cuddly, online ‘virtual’ fuzzy pet, be satisfied if you buy it virtual “costumes” with your real dollars?

Last week two Media Think colleagues (Joan Rutkowski and Matt Stockton) and I presented a televised discussion about television advertising.

We examined four ads for the above products in some detail.

In the course of the Metro East, cable access program, “Community Hotline,” we considered several questions:

Who made these ads? How were they made and at what cost?

For whom were they made?

What devices were used to appeal to the “target audience”

How successful were the ads in appealing to the audience?

What were the ads NOT telling viewers that they needed to know about the product.”

One hour wasn’t enough time to do justice to the questions or the answers, but we made a start. (The program will be rebroadcast, and I’ve listed the times below if you are interested in seeing what we had to say.)

The ability to “read” visual images critically (yes, I know, words are also visual images) is a necessity in our media-saturated culture. The field of media literacy tries to address that need. Media Think, one of dozens of groups around the country, is lobbying to make media literacy a “life skill” and a required subject in our schools.

Without the skill, we will be increasingly vulnerable media messages aimed not at our minds but at our emotions and basest instincts—never mind the cost to us, our society or the planet.

As I’ve done my own critical thinking about our on-air ad analysis, I wish we had shared some key concepts of media literacy and applied them to the ads.

Better late than never.

You can find varying lists of these concepts, but here are the ones that the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA) circulates. After each. I’ve included my own parenthetical comments in hopes of giving you a sense of the concept’s significance.

1. All media messages are “constructed.” (This very list was constructed with a purpose and an audience in mind. How was it constructed, by whom, for whom, why? Now ask the same questions of all media messages.)
2. Each medium has different characteristics, strengths, and a unique “language” of construction. (What messages are best suited for television, the internet, magazines, radio, billboards? How does the message change to fit the medium?)
3. Media messages are produced for particular purposes. (Sell, inform, deceive, convince, frighten, etc.)
4. All media messages contain embedded values and points of view. (patriotism, eternal youth, consumerism, motherhood, loyalty, security, beauty etc.)
5. People use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages. (No two people see the same message in the same way. Your understanding of, or reaction to, a message is uniquely yours. Helpful hint: check perceptions.
6. Media and media messages can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and the democratic process. (Why do you think those political candidates are spending all that money on advertising? Why do you know what ‘Aflac’ means?)

Here’s that schedule for the rebroadcast of our discussion:

• Mon., Feb. 4 through Fri., Feb. 8, 12 p.m., Ch. 22
• Mon., Feb. 4, 9 p.m., Ch. 11
• Mon., Feb. 4, 8:30 a.m., Ch. 21
• Mon., Feb. 4, 5:30 p.m., Ch. 21
• Wed., Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m., Ch. 22

Replays on Channels 11 and 21 will reach Portland and the East Metro area.

Portland School Board flunks media literacy

Like the Portland City Council, the Portland School Board is apparently media illiterate.

They simply don’t get it that it is wrong to sell off public property for commercial advertising in the name of “corporate partnerships” or “recognition opportunities.”

The issue arose before the City Council in the spring when some of us tried to block the selling of naming rights to parks facilities. We lost.

Last night three of us from the Coalition for Commercial Free Schools testified before the school board. (By the way I wrote about this issue here a couple of days ago.)

We might as well have been talking to a wall.

At one point our presentation even drew applause for folks who happened to be in the audience to address other issues. They got it.

A couple of them even e-mailed us today offering support. One, Steve Rawley, is commenting on our testimony on his issue-packed blog, More Hockey Less War.

If we persuaded the audience, why not the board?

Two possibilities:

1. These folks just don't think critically about media and its impact on kids. As suggest above, they are media ILLiterate.

2. They are so busy with and blinded by hiring a new superintendent, trying to keep the system running and meeting No Child Left Behind requirements that they don't have the time or inclination to tell the Portland Trailblazers, “No, we will not let you plaster your logo on the walls of 13 gyms in exchange for refurbishing the floors. Alternatively, we will happily accept the $600,000 for the work as a donation, with the understanding that we will publicly and sincerely thank you with a press conference and a small plaque.”

In our testimony last night my colleagues and I told the board of a host of health issues associated with this kind of rampant commercialism in the schools. We also underscored a host of social, educational and ethical issues.

We want the school board to promulgate a policy that clearly defines how corporate donors are to be thanked. The definition should not include PR and advertising “recognition opportunities,” which school marketing staff are blatantly peddling to attract corporate dollars.

By the way, reporters at both The Oregonian and The Tribune are working on stories on the issue.

Here’s what I told the board.

9/24/2007 Statement before the Portland School Board.

Re: Resolution No. 3764

I am Rick Seifert of Media Think, a local media literacy group, which is a member of the Coalition for Commercial-Free schools.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

The most instructive aspect of the deal before you is that one of the terms used to describe it is a “recognition opportunity.”

The term goes by less revealing terms as “corporate partnerships” and “corporate sponsorships,” but “recognition opportunity” directly addresses motive. Search the web for “recognition opportunities” and you will find they are rampant.

“Recognition opportunities” are nothing more than contributions made on condition that they will produce a return in advertising and public relations.

High school students, as you know, are a highly sought-after advertising demographic target. They have years of purchasing ahead of them. To plant a logo in front of their eyes repeatedly in an emotionally charged athletic setting over ten years is brilliant marketing.

That logo will carry no explanation for why it is on the floor. For all future students may know, the school district endorses the companies and their products, be they sneakers or professional basketball games.

I suggest you test the motives at work here, not that you have to, because your staff is using the term “recognition opportunity” to seek funds.

Test it by proposing this: We accept and deeply appreciate the money to refurbish these floors, we offer thanks publicly and will put up small, unobtrusive plaques in each gym to acknowledge the gift. The plaques come down when it is time to refurbish again.

Will the donors agree? Apparently not.

Motive is important.

If I knew you ran for the school board in order to seize a “recognition opportunity,” would I vote for you?

If I were appearing here tonight in order to gain a “recognition opportunity” would you listen to me?

Do we want our children to do good works as “recognition opportunities”? Do you want them to know that their schools feed these motives? Do you want them to know that you are basically selling them as a captive audience to advertisers?

Finally, as taxpayers do we want to pay for school facilities only to have them be turned into billboards for “recognition opportunity” seekers.

Here is my advice. Publicly thank the donors for their generous gift. Acknowledge it specifically on plaques and then….do the much needed work of coming up with a clear policy to cover how you will acknowledge such gifts in a way that is open, dignified and exemplary.

Thank you

Someone Please Explain ....

Al Gore’s book, “The Assault on Reason,” is something of a hymn to media literacy, even though he never says so in those words.

A core argument in his book is that television has utterly debased political discourse in America. Emotion, particularly raw fear, has utterly expelled reason in what the nation’s founders always assumed would be the free and open marketplace of ideas.

Now the marketplace has been decimated a societal suicide bomb of irrational shrapnel and mayhem. (Those are my overheated words, not Gore’s.)

Gore was defeated 5 votes to 4 — by a partisan Supreme Court. That he won the people’s vote may be the best counter-argument to his fears. But that was before 9/11 and the unraveling we have seen since.

Now for the strange parts in Gore’s media literacy riff.

Gore repeats the widely cited statistic that the average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of TV a day. That’s always been a frightening figure. I like to point out that it amounts to something like 17 solid years of the average person’s life.

But Gore puts it in a new context. “When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep, and couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat, and commute, [time devoted to TV] is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average America has. Younger Americans, on average, spend even more time watching TV.”

We are, in short, numbing ourselves in our “off-hours.” Aldous Huxley and “Brave New World” were closer to the truth than George Orwell and “1984.” Both are well worth rereading, and not just for their contrasting visions of the future.

Gore adds this bizarre and new (to me at least) finding, and the one I desperately need some help with:

“…the majority of Internet users report that they watch television — at least some of the time — while they use the Internet. Sixty percent of those who use both media simultaneously report that they regularly have the television on while they are using the internet. Studies show not only a continued increase in the average time Americans spend watching television each day but also an increase in the average time spent by Internet users watching the television while they use the Internet.”

I don’t get it.

Is this some weird multi-tasking, or multi-zoning out? Talk about a best-case scenario for attention-deficit disorder.

I’ve heard of folks who keep the TV on all the time to “keep them company” (whatever happened to the joys of solitude?) but why would you want the tube on while you are on the internet? Perhaps it’s a security blanket for the freedom offered by the internet’s welcoming invitation to inter-action. Even as we respond, we must be immersed in the babblings of an unquestionable source (TV), however questionable it might be.

I highly recommend Gore’s book, which serves as prima facie evidence that he still should be president. A Gandhi excepted, Gore is about as un-Bush-like a leader as one could hope for.

Let us count the ways….

Escape from the Electronic Cave

“Television and the Presentation of Reality,” Philosophy 197, is a Portland Community College course being taught this summer by Matt Stockton, a young philosophy instructor well versed in contemporary media.

My friend Joan Rutkowski and I are both active in the media literacy movement so we went out to the Rock Creek PCC campus to meet Matt and to attend the first class.

Matt told the 16 or so students that the course is really was about media literacy.

The syllabus description lays out some of the dimensions of the subject. Electronic media, Matt writes, “has emerged as the most popular source of information concerning our perspectives of reality.” He notes that the 2000 census reported the average American spends nearly 1,600 hours a year watching television. That’s about 4.25 hours a day, or 29 percent of our waking hours.

Philosophy 197 looks like a great class. I came away from my visit with two or three new ideas, not the least of which is that our expectations shape (Matt actually said expectations “dictate”) our experience.

Of course, the media are all about shaping expectations — about appearance, about resolving conflict (usually violently), about the meaning of success (the one with the most toys wins), about time and its value, about entitlement, about knowledge and about what is “cool” or not “cool.”

More than shaping experience, media expectations shape our values, our decisions, our lives.

Matt put it another way too. We are born into a world with a gap between who (or what) we are and who (or what) we want to be. Media managers and advertisers happily fill that gap for their own purposes.

But this is a philosophy course and the first class wasn’t without its philosophy, in this case Plato’s Cave Analogy, which, when you reconsider it, is a pretty good description of our relationship with media.

You’ll recall that Plato describes a situation in which a group of people is confined from birth in a cave so that all they can see are shadows cast on a wall. (Think, very big screen but no cable fee.) The shadows are what the prisoners understand to be reality. One day a member of the group escapes only to find that the shadows, far from being reality, are really images made by a person standing in front of a fire and manipulating the shadows. Any escapee who leaves the cave and its manipulated images will find a “new” “true” reality.

Through understanding, discussion and critical thinking, the students in Phl 197 may be on the verge of their own escape.

That is what media literacy is all about.

TV critic as loathing grammarian

Peter Carlin, the Oregonian's TV critic, wrote a real jaw-dropper Wednesday about TV-Turnoff Week, which is happening now.

I took special interest in the column because I help organize TV-Turnoff locally.

I've encouraged several friends to take a look at the column and give me their reactions.

"Mean-spirited," "off-the-mark," and "tongue in cheek" are responses I have received.

If Carlin intended his column to be "tongue in cheek," he failed to signal his intent to this reader.

"Mean-spirited"? "Off-the-mark"?

I'm not so sure.

In fact the intent of the column escapes me. Carlin is hostile about the organizers of TV-Turnoff Week, even as he says he is "in favor of everything TV-Turnoff Week is trying to achieve."

After that sweeping endorsement he proceeds to say he "loathes those guys" who are organizing the event. Actually, many are women, but never mind.

He attributes a motive to "those guys" (and I do take this personally) of trying to establish "their own superiority."

Really?

These "guys" and gals are simply asking folks to assess the role of TV and "screens" in their lives. To what extent are the media addictive, for instance? Are they beneficial? Are they harmful? When and why?

Just how much time is devoted to watching? Is it time well spent?

It doesn't take a superior person to ask those kinds of "check-in" questions. In fact, you'd think that any TV critic worthy of the name would be asking those questions all the time.

But, for some undetermined reason, Carlin is hot in pursuit of "evidence" to prove that we in the media literacy movement are "not really all that smart." He finds it in a phrase and a line from the TV-Turnoff web site. He allows that his discoveries make all of us "come off like jerks."

That's a flaming, Limbaughesque/Imus-like leap, but let's take a look.

He reads condescension into the web site's line "...if you care about your children...you're going to listen to what we have to say." Carlin suggests that the phrasing implies that you, dear reader, don't care about your children if you allow them to watch too much TV.

Hello? The "If you..." device is purely rhetorical and he knows it. Often it implies "and we know you do" as is the case here. Or it may go like this: "If you care about your children (and what parent doesn't?) etc."

Next Carlin is off on a truly bizarre critique of the web writer's use of ellipses. That's right, that little row of pixelated dots. Here he is flat out wrong, not that it matters except he makes so much of it. In the AP Stylebook (Carlin should have one at arm's reach) an acceptable use of an ellipsis is to "indicate a pause or hesitation in speech." And that is exactly how it is used in the example Carlin excoriates.

Utterly fascinating, I know....

Next comes a riff on another line from the TV-Turnoff site: "Empowering people to take control of technology and not letting technology take control of them so they can live healthier lives."

I wouldn't want to live or die by those words. They are a sentence fragment and don't parse, but, frankly, they are perfectly understandable. I hope Carlin isn't suggesting we decide whether writers are jerks or non-jerks, or causes just or unjust, based on grammatical perfection.

Life is too short.

The rest of his critique is mildly funny and does indeed seem to morph unexpectedly into tongue-in-cheek satire.

So where does this leave us?

After cranking my jaw back into position, I actually feel pretty good about Carlin's wild ride. I've often said that those of us in the media literacy movement will know we are making progress when those in the industry show signs of paying attention. Carlin isn't "in the industry" but he clearly is an adjunct to it. As a TV critic, he picks away at television's content, but he avoids critiquing the medium itself.

If no one watched, he'd be out of a job.

Let me shed my superiority complex for a moment and suggest that there's a lot to criticize about the media literacy movement beyond ellipses, sentence fragments and non-parallel constructions.

For example, it concerns me that when we create our own media literacy videos ("Game Over," "Merchants of Cool," "The Ad and the Ego" et al.) we unquestioningly employ the very techniques that we often find worthy of criticism in the mass media.

We also have failed to take our concerns directly to those responsible, the advertising and media industries. Instead, we have assumed that there is no common ground. There may not be, but at least we should open up lines of communication and explore the possibility.

When and if we do, rest assured we will not loathe "those guys" and suggest they are behaving like jerks.

If that attitude somehow makes us superior, so be it.

Ten media commandments

Richard Austin Thompson, a retired Presbyterian Church pastor, has taken up the cause of media literacy and put it in a theological context.

As a Volunteer-in-Mission as Media Literacy Resources Coordinator for the Office of Communication of the General Assembly Council, PC (USA), Thompson has created Ten Media Commandments to accompany each of the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament.

They seem a stretch at times, but here they are juxtaposed.

Judge for yourselves:

ONE: “You shall have no other gods before Me.”

1. Thou shalt have no media power higher than God.

TWO: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

2. Thou shalt worship no electronic image.

THREE: “You shall not take the name of the Lord. your God, in vain.”

3. Thou shalt not view programs that trivialize God.

FOUR: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

4. Thou shalt take sabbaths from TV viewing.

FIVE: “Honor your father and your mother.”

5. Thou shalt view programs that honor families.

SIX: “You shall not murder.”

6. Thou shalt not view programs depicting gratuitous violence.

SEVEN: “You shall not commit adultery.”

7. Thou shalt not view programs depicting promiscuous sex.

EIGHT: “You shall not steal.”

8. Thou shalt not view programs disrespectful of persons/property.

NINE: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

9. Thou shalt subject broadcast claims to a truth test.

TEN: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

10. Thou shalt not covet what thou seest on TV commercials.

Media fast leads to introspection

Each year in my “Visual Communication in the Media” course at Portland Community College, I assign a “media fast” of a day or two to my students and ask them to reflect on the experience in a short paper.

The results are in from this year’s fasts, and, as in the past, they are fascinating.

The biggest change this year is that several students specifically mentioned that the medium they found easiest to let go of was television.

NOT, interestingly enough, newspapers. Not that all of them read newspapers (most get their news on-line), but those that do missed the ritual of reading the morning paper.

So here are some of the more telling comments from the written reflections:

A student who admits “the media are a huge part of everyday life” for him wrote, “I exercised much more when I didn’t have media to entertain me. The fast from media gave me a new outlook on things.”

One student. a golf fan, turned to his father to fill him in on the standings in the forbidden Master’s Tournament. That “resulted in my having a very long talk with my father, who had no such media restrictions, about what was going on in the tournament. This talk led into other areas and soon became one of the nicest I have ever had with my Dad.”

Another student said the media fast “was a chance to remember who you are as a person and (it was) a way to get back to the more important things like family, friendship and the ‘real’ you.”

One student was riding in a car with a friend who went to turn on the radio. My student stopped her, reminding her of the fast. “After that, instead of playing music or turning on the radio, we stated singing in the car.”

Later, this student, her friend and others played board games. “We played for two hours, then we got coffee and cake and we were all talking to each other. It was truly amusing.” The same student wrote, “I felt that I listened to people more than I usually do. I also talked more….”

Another wrote: “I went to the park of at least four hours and played. My senses were amazing. I felt more in touch with nature.”

Yet another wrote, “Spiritually, I started to look at how I spent my time and analyzed it. I thought about how much I am a slave to media and how I could correct the problems.”

That’s enough.

You — and they — get the picture….

Business gets the best of the news

Last Thursday, both The New York Times and The Oregonian ran a story about a Kaiser Family Foundation study showing how TV targets kids with junk food ads that contribute to the alarming rise in childhood obesity.

Gosh, parents might want to know about the study. It serves as further incentive to get a handle on kids' TV and junk food consumption. (Hint: TV Turnoff Week is coming up April 23-29)

So where might they expect to find the story in the newspaper? In the Times' health section? In The Oregonian's "Living" section?

Fat chance.

Both papers put it in the business section. The Oregonian simply ran an AP story devoid of local reporting, although childhood nutrition is a hot issue in the state legislature and plenty of health experts here would happily comment on the Kaiser study.

The Times business-section story's headline fell under the "advertising" label. The story consisted of a back and forth between a Kaiser Family Foundation official and food and advertising industry "spokespeople." The industry mouthpieces dismissed the 2005 study as being "dated" and insisted that the food industry has been cleaning up its act. Kaiser countered that the study would serve as a "base-line" to measure any alleged industry reform.

If you want to see how "dated" the study is and whether there has been a change, check out the ads on the Saturday morning cartoon fare. (By the way, in Scandinavian countries, ALL TV advertising to children is prohibited. My own view is that ads aimed at kids are nothing less than predatory.)

At the very least, newspapers should put stories about TV stuffing harmful ads down the throats of our kids where the stories belong—in front of parents.

I learned a long time ago that much of the best "intelligence" on what is going on in this country is the exclusive domain of the business press. Pick up The Wall Street Journal or read trade publications and you'll see what I mean.

So Calvin Coolidge's adage, "The business of America is business," has a corollary: the real news of America is business news.

Gamer's Surprise: "The blood's real, the death's real"

Front page headline in yesterday’s New York Times……“Violent Crime in Cities Shows
Sharp Surge, Reversing Trend”

The news….Many communities are suffering a rise in murder, robbery and gun assaults since late 2005 because of methamphetamine use, gangs, poverty, more released ex-cons on the streets, easy access to guns and, according to the story, “a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them, particularly among young people.”

But the real kicker comes next, in a quote from Chris Magnus, the beleaguered police chief of Richmond, Calif.: “There’s a mentality among some people that they’re living some really violent video game…What’s disturbing is that you see that the blood’s real, the death’s real.”

And that’s it: A passing reference to a culture of video-game violence that most certainly plays a significant role in fueling crime among vulnerable youth in vulnerable communities.

The story is loaded with statistics, but none reveals how much time these young robbers and murderers spend in a cruel, addictive video world that teaches them that violence is fun, acceptable, and carries zero consequences.

It’s bad enough that time spent with these violent games is time utterly wasted for all players. Chief Magnus and others in law enforcement may be realizing that “Grand Theft Auto” and its ilk are conditioning the suggestible to kill.

The law enforcement/crime prevention community needs to wake up, gather the evidence, connect the dots and demand legislation that will address the problem. They might start by looking at this Free Radical "video games" site, which is packed with links to references on video games and crime.

While they are doing that, we—adults and kids alike—need to take back our lives from a synthetic, mediated world of twisted values and violence.

More resources: You can find help at the Center for Screen Time Awareness and the Northwest Media Literacy Center.... An excellent video on this subject is "Game Over."