Discussing the Media in a Media Illiterate Society

[Writer]

I am posting this directly to my journal. I don't know if this will post anywhere else, but I assure you I don't wish it to. (Who knows - maybe I'll once more instill the belief in others that I'm a pretentious woman writing from her ivory tower? :eyes:) But quite frankly, I don't care what others think of what I write or what I believe. I wanted this entry to be read by only a few, and only those who would care enough (I believe that number lies somewhere between 0 and 0.00) to actually open up my journal and read it. I typically keep an offline journal in a Word document on my laptop. But these are thoughts that I would prefer to share with a few... perhaps like a flashlight in the dark, not wishing to shine too much light on herself, but enough glow to illuminate only what's important to me.

This all started when I was thirteen in 1988, as I watched Congress debate cable rebroadcasting consent rules debated on the House floor on C-SPAN. I became enamored with the study of broadcasting, specifically television, at an early age but that grew to become a lifelong love, from college to the broadcast industry, to afterward as a writer, to here as I write in this journal. I earned a BS in Radio-TV-Film and an MA in Media Studies. I hope to earn admission to a PhD program in the next year. I am a complete geek about communication issues, to my detriment as a young woman who tore through television ratings right out of college, pointing out every interesting factoid I could find, while my coworkers rolled their eyes.

My thesis is that Americans, being so richly immersed in rapid communication, are media illiterate. We read media, we listen to media, we watch media, we write media, but we do not understand much of it. In fact, I would gather that many do not even know that the word "media" is a plural noun - an obscure but very important fact that my professors pounded into our minds from the moment I stepped into a media studies class. It seems like such a picky grammatical point, but I believe that the daily comments I read online beginning with "The media is..." reveals the collectivist grouplogic that limits our ability to truly assess and change our media. And, in turn, this impacts how we affect our version of democracy.

The media are a group of disparate mediums that we use to transmit communication from a sender to a receiver. If we decide to think of the media as a collective - like a beehive - we immediately limit their incredible complexity as an institution. We simplify them, and therefore, simplify our view of them. If we can break ourselves of this false logic, and begin to assess each medium as its own entity, then we can free ourselves of the limited and fallacious notion that somehow they work collectively. They simply don't. Especially in this age of digitization, where media are as diverse as the 300 million of us in this nation, the mere idea that the many workers (especially journalists) somehow can coordinate their messages on a daily basis is unfathomable.

Instead - and I strongly emphasize - focus on the receivers who make choices about which messages they wish to receive. What are their tastes and preferences before making their media choices? What are their political standings? What are their philosophical assumptions before turning on their television or entering a web site? The receivers are the media consumers and the(little d) democrats. And the media, being run by capital, listen to what the majority of us wish to focus on at the moment. They may not always comport with your philosophical beliefs at the moment, but to diverge from the majority of tastes would mean economic death for many media institutions. We are our media, and it is a very honest reflect of America's moments - even if those are very bad moments.

But to dissect this just a bit farther, consider that many Americans advocating the media do not always understand what aspects of media the government can actually affect. One of my deepest belly laughs came after reading a comment by a poster who wrote that he was angry at Bill Clinton because he "signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that increased media ownership caps, giving us Fox News." Setting aside the mere complexity of the Telecom Act (it is the reason why I can type this to all of you cheaply, and why some of us now watch high-definition television, by the way) the fact that the content of cable television networks such as The Fox News Channel are not regulated by the FCC was missing. And that is a very important point, especially to the many of us who don't agree with Fox's version of "journalism." Deregulation of broadcast ownership impacts only broadcast television networks and stations. If tomorrow a group of us were to protest the Fox News Channel, on the other hand, the calls shouldn't be for "fairness," the calls should be to their many advertisers to boycott that waste of cable space. Fox News operates in the world of cable television, where the only regulation is consumer choices. And those choices change as the political climate changes. Is it not a surprise to you that Fox News' ratings have dropped as Bush's popularity has decreased? Don't believe me? Look it up!

I suppose this is the time that I should propose a call to action. That I should suggest a solution to combat what I see as a rampant problem. I don't have a solution, really. I say this because if I've learned anything over the last few years in online forums, it's that the quickest way to rankle a liberal is to suggest that they may not be enlightened somehow. To suggest that they drop their Chomsky and Bagdikian (I'll save my utter hatred for Chomsky for another day) and learn a bit about more about how the media operate before they advocate change. But let me leave you, you 0 to 0.00 of you reading this now, these thoughts: In school you learned how to interpret literature. You tore apart the meaning of Yeats or Steinbeck. You discovered how poems are constructed, how Swift deftly used prose to satirize the British monarchy. But we did not learn to break apart media images and sounds to find their meaning. Perhaps its time we started teaching that skill in school, as well.

[Guava Jelly]

1. I read it.

Now you know i am a grammar disaster.
But I will share a thought.
I agree that the way to catalyze change is through the purse strings.
But the delusional's over at "Fox Spews" aren't the only ones that needs changed.
All the Washington Reporters who go to the politicians barbeque's the ones who are Buddy's you know.. "To get the scoop"
need to be fired as well.
You cant be objective and honest and be a friend..In real life yes.But in politics no.
Just imho
Btw I have two wind up record players

Here is one of them

[Writer]

2. Hi, sweetie. Can I challenge you with a question?

I think the incestuous nature of the press corp and politicians places a large crimp on journalist independence, but how do you reconcile your proposal to ban such relationships with their constitutional right to freely assemble?

PS: Very cool turntables! I have a 1948 Philco console radio/turntable and a 1944 GE desktop AM radio. Both in working condition. :thumbsup:

[Guava Jelly]

5. I am not saying ban them.

I would never wish to infringe on their civil liberties.
I just wouldn't give them any credibility as journalist.
Maybe insist strongly somehow that the term "Commentator" be attached to these so called Journalist.
Because they are not reporting they are spouting opinions in most cases.
Or pitching softballs to old buddies.

cool!! radio btw..Gemini

[Writer]

6. Very good points.

But I believe the reason why many journalists are encasing their news in opinion, a la Fox, is because a like-minded audience demands it. Political opinion is now a consumer good for the masses.

(Yeah, that's crazy that we both collect old sound equipment - HA!)

[otherlander]

3. Wow... I looked at your journal.

NOBODY who commented on the Immigrating to Canada post got the irony. They all thought you were being serious. :rofl:

[Writer]

4. Oh... I remember that.

And that post was based on more of Chomsky's "brilliance." All around DU, I'm sometimes surprised when posters don't pick up on the subtle messages of some posts. We're all fallible humans. Oh well.

[otherlander]

7. Okay, so...

I've never read anything by Chomsky, except some excerpts from Media Control that someone posted on here. Something to the effect of: the point of the phrase "Support our Troops" is that it means nothing, so that nobody can disagree with it, and it sounds a lot better than "Support War", which can be disagreed with.
So why do you think he's an idiot? Just wondering.

[Writer]

8. Okay... here's a little bit on my take of Chomsky.

Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" proposes what he calls the "Propaganda Model." The model contains five filters that he believes disempowers the masses en lieu of the powerful "elite." This, of course, occurs through the media. I'd like to note that this book was written in 1988 before the advent of the World Wide Web, which is important because I believe digitization has disrupted any concept of a "powerful few" in control of public discourse.

Chomsky is correct, actually brilliant, in his observation that the consolidation of media ownership curtails the principle of diverse messages reaching the public. However, it's an incredibly naive concept, and for two reasons:

First, his notion of the public is grossly simplistic. In his model, the public serve as sitting ducks in a firing range of propagandistic messages traveling from the government through "opinion leaders" that appear on the media. He fails to account for how an individual's background and experiences may make that person more or less susceptible to the messages of these so-called "experts." A very good recent example of this is the poll released during the first couple of years of the Iraq War, indicating that 60% of the populace believed that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 2001 Terror Attacks. 60% is a significant number, which has since shrunk significantly, but what about the 40% that didn't buy what the Bush Admin. was selling? What caused them to reject what others accepted? Also, if the public is a mass of sponges, why did many of the 60% believing this lie later drop out? Because the public is a far more complicated entity than Chomsky insinuates.

Second, Chomsky does not account for the new digital world. Within all fairness he could not have seen this in 1988 when he wrote "Manufacturing Consent," but the way we use new technologies today completely negates Chomsky's concept of our reliance on elite "experts" for political messages. The Internet has completely dismantled that. We now have become our own experts, performing our own research, writing our own blogs, and making our own cases for political change. And we all have audiences for our "expert" opinion.

That's only the beginning... I could write more, but that will have to be later.

[Writer]

9. This thread is precisely why I believe we need a more media literate society.

How in the hell are we supposed to advocate that which we don't fully understand?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=801405&mesg_id=801405