Media Literacy for the '90s - U.S. Style

In recent years, as I have travelled around the world to Manila for WACC's first congress or to Europe to connect with colleagues at conferences, I am often greeted with the question: what is the U.S. doing in media education? Upon hearing my reply of "very little," the cry is universal: How can a country that so blatantly inundates the rest of the world with its cultural products be so uncritical of what it's producing?

The answer lies in a complex political and economic media structure as well as a general myopia about the longterm impact of technology on social systems and family relationships. Fortunately as we begin the decade of the 90's, the climate is changing. A call for media education not only for the young but for adults of all ages, is being raised increasingly by influential journals, educational leaders, and respected political voices throughout the country.

A few organizations, including my own, are beginning to respond. The following vignettes chronicle trends in media education in the United States in the past years and what I perceive as exciting new directions for the future.

Economic Underpinnings

Ironically, Hollywood itself has recently issued the most telling critique of television in the lives of the American people. The film (released in November, 1990) is Avalon and in it, director Barry Levinson explores the dissolution of a large immigrant family from the end of World War II through the 1970's.

In the opening scenes a dozen children of all ages gather eagerly around their grandfather on Thanksgiving Day to hear, once again, how he came to America in 1914. Later in the day, as the family enjoys the traditional holiday feast, the crowded dining room is filled with stories and laughter and, above all, familial love.

In the following year two of the younger sons decide to start their own business: a store selling the new home appliances now rolling out of converted military plants — washing machines and electric toasters, radios and air conditioners. Sucked in by the "American dream" of two cars in the garage and house in the suburbs full of labor-saving appliances, the brothers invest their savings in wholesale mass marketing — and make a fortune.

Soon television arrives. And in one of the most poignant family portraits ever created for the silver screen, three generations of the Krichinsky family squeeze together in front of their new TV set and stare vacantly at a black-and-white test pattern. "Just wait," one of the children says, "something will happen."

Thereafter the flickering pictures and sounds of TV — from "Howdy Doody time" to Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theatre" become the family's constant background buzz. The family that ate together and talked together, sometimes bickering but always communicating, begins to drift apart. The generations separate when the younger ones move from the old ethnic neighborhood to the newer suburbs. As the years evolve, we see the nuclear family of mother, father and two children silently taking their meals on TV tables, their glazed eyes fixed on the flickering screen in front of them.

Although some say Avalon indicts television as the cause of the decline of the American family, the fact is that television is only the visible tip of an enormous invisible iceberg: consumerism. What Avalon documents is the loss of family traditions (and values) to the values of a consumer economy. Television was (and continues to be) primarily a delivery system delivering first to the U.S. — and then to the rest of the world — the message and the myth, the vision and possibility of life in a consumer society.

In the Summer, l990 issue of Media&Values, Canadian author Kalle Lasn, explains how this happened and continues to happen each time we Americans turn on our sets:

"In the privacy of our living rooms we made a devil's bargain with the advertising industry: Give us an endless flow of free programs and we'll let you spend 12 minutes of every hour promoting consumption. For a long time, it seemed to work. The ads grated on our nerves but it was a small price to pay for 'free' television."

"What we didn't realize when we made our pact with the advertisers was that their agenda would eventually become the heart and soul of television. We have allowed the most powerful communications tool ever invented to become the command center of a consumer society defining our lives and culture the way family, community and spiritual values once did."

As William F. Fore so clearly points out in Mythmakers: Gospel, Culture and Media, technology was "progress" and for Americans who wanted to forget the hardships of wartime, and the Great Depression before that, progress was inherently good. To critique television in the 1950s was to critique the economic underpinnings of the consumer society. And to do that meant one must be unAmerican, or worse, a communist.

It is only now in the 1990's, with the end of the Cold War but with the threat of environmental destruction all around us as a result of overconsumption, waste and unbridled commercial exploitation of the earth, that Americans are finally understanding the symbiotic relationship between mass media and the consumer economy. The time is right for media education.

Television Awareness Training

There was, for a time in the mid-1970's, a fledgling media activism in the U.S. It sprang, however, from the belief that children would learn bad behaviors from watching television. The portrayal of violence and the depiction of sexual themes were particularly troublesome for many parents. There was great concern that children should be "innoculated" against the presumed power of such messages.

It was out of this concern that Television Awareness Training was born. The eventual decline of the project is particularly significant if only for the fact that it was exported by dedicated disciples to many other countries. Like the brand names "Kleenex" or "Scotch" tape, "Television Awareness Training" became a catchword for media education particularly in religious circles around the world.

Developed by a partnership of denominational communications offices under the aegis of a not-for-profit organization known as the Media Action Research Center, Television Awareness Training consisted of a 10-week course of study that invovlved discussion of television shows, identification of negative (and positive) messages and analysis of how those messages influenced individual values and family relationships.

T-A-T, as it came to be called, promised to "help one move, step by step, into a deepening awareness about television and opportunities for change." (from the forward to Television Awareness Training: The Viewer's Guide for Family and Community.)

Throughout the late l970's hundreds of teachers and leaders were trained in week-end regional training programs. Graduates were then "accredited" to lead T-A-T sessions in their home communities, provided they could get the financing to purchase the TV clips on 16 mm film (nearly $1000) and the participants could purchase the 275-page workbook (about $15.) The project was so successful among Catholics (at one point Catholic nuns with degrees in religious education were a large majority of the accredited leaders) and the major Protestant denominations that a Scripture-based spin-off "Growing with Television" project was created for religious education and Sunday schools.

But by the early 1980's T-A-T began to decline due, I believe, to three factors: expense, elitism and lack of an effective organizational structure for growth and development.

The expense required to establish oneself as a local T-A-T leader limited the program primarily to those who had institutional support to purchase the resources. In addition the 16 mm TV clips went out of date quickly as popular programs changed and new characters and shows came into vogue. At the time, VCRs with their inexpensive videotapes, were still a promise to come.

Secondly, although conceived as a way to control the quality of local instruction, the policy of "accrediting" leaders ultimately backfired by restricting media literacy leadership only to "qualified" teachers (who also had the financial resources noted above). The result was that many knowledgeable and effective teachers or leaders felt "unqualified" to discuss television or analyze media issues without the requisite training.

Finally as the core group of initial committed leaders began to inevitably erode, the lack of organizational resources on the part of the Media Action Research Center resulted in a crumbling of an increasingly fragile network. Without appropriate national staff, ongoing communication and nurture of trainers, the re-tooling of outdated resources or the development of new projects as new needs emerged (the VCR revolution, for instance), there was not much of a "center" to hold those in the periphery together.

In 1984 M.A.R.C. purchased Media&Values magazine in order to provide a vehicle for new ideas and ongoing communication with its trained leaders. Ironically, when the first announcement about Media&Values was mailed to the existing list of T-A-T leaders, a large percentage came back "undeliverable."

In reflecting on the T-A-T era, Stewart Hoover, one of the project's original writers and now an associate professor in the Department of Communications and Theatre at Temple University, notes that "T-A-T was appropriate for an era when television in the U.S. was virtually controlled by the three networks. Now with so much choice from cable and satellite services and VCRs it is less possible to influence all the sources that are coming at us. The challenge of control has shifted to the individual viewer."

Furthermore he explains that television and mass media have become so ingrained in our cultural milieu that we should no longer view the task of media education as providing "protection" against unwanted messages. "Our goal must be to help people become competent, critical and literate in all media forms so that they control the interpretation of what they see or hear rather than letting the interpretation control them."

Stirrings of a Movement

A few years ago, the Christian Science Monitor wrote in an editorial: "There is (today) a deep questioning of the role of media, a suspicion that the media distorts, fictionalizes, treats as gossip or as soap opera serious public matters. We need a new discourse. . . a discourse that speaks frankly of what most needs to be done, and why." (January 4-12, 1988)

When we look critically and clearly at mass media in the U.S. today, we are aware of many contradictions. Commercial media's values of consumerism, narcissism and instant gratification are shallow and superficial. We must begin to worry that they are also dangerous for the mental health and spiritual well-being not just of individuals but of democracy itself. However in a society with a First Amendment, censorship is not the answer. Political pressure — like writing letters— or economic pressure — like boycotts — can sometimes be effective for the short term. But the short term is not enough. What we really need is long-term change — to change hearts and minds — and that takes education, learning to see with new eyes and hear with new ears.

What is growing in the U.S., I believe, is a new media "movement," a consumer consciousness not unlike the current nutrition movement that has revolutionized both the way people eat and the food industry itself. And although a critique recognizes that the nutrition movement itself may be a product of trendy consumer whim, nevertheless, forty percent of the population now makes some deliberate food choice every day and, on the whole, is healthier for it.

All too often public discussion of media values has had an underlying theme of "us" vs. "them" as though media creators were all-powerful manipulators and viewers only passive participants. But viewers make choices too. It's time, I believe, to end the rhetoric and declare that responsibility for the quality of our media environment is a 50-50 partnership between creators and consumers.

This is not by any means to ignore the accountability of those who create the images and stories of popular media or perhaps more to the point, the marketplace economy that strangles what was once an original and creative industry with a bottom-line chokehold. But the issue of mass media's influence in our lives is not resolvable by placing blame or pointing fingers. To echo Stewart Hoover, what we must do, I believe, is start the long haul task of educating ourselves and our children for making wise media choices. In a democracy like the United States, it is the accumulation of individual choices that will ultimately challenge the industry to greater responsibility to the society it serves.

Today's media environment offers a window of opportunity to organize a movement for media awareness. Already over 30% of the viewing audience has discovered other alternatives to network broadcasting. Nearly 60% of homes have VCR's and 50% have dozens of viewing options available through cable. Leisure time is on the rise and "quality of life" issues are a major concern for young couples and the social system (schools, churches, health care, governments) that serves them.

Educating young people to make positive media choices, teaching parents how to recognize and respond to media's underlying values and, in general, promoting a media "consciousness" is the challenge of the l990's for educators, activists and service providers who recognize that for our society to flourish, we must turn the closed, one way system of commercial mass media into a two-way process of discussion, reflection and action with each other and with the media itself.

From Awareness to Action

How do we start this process? How do we get people to raise questions and think critically? If the goal of media literacy in the 90's is empowerment for choice rather than protection from a "dangerous" or unwanted influence, then new methods are needed for a new kind of learning.

Media literacy is not a finite body of knowledge but rather a skill, a process, a way of thinking that, like reading comprehension, is always evolving. What is important for media literacy is not to know all the answers, but to raise the right questions about what you watch, read or listen to.

Media literacy, it seems, is really media consciousness, and the appropriate method is, I believe, more related to the process of conscientization as described by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. than to traditional educational methods that make teachers into funnels siphoning facts and knowledge into hinged student heads.

Since 1977, I've edited a magazine that has challenged its readers to think seriously about and question the impact and influence of television and mass media on families and in the lives of individuals, young and old. Over the years we have tackled such controversial subjects as sexuality in the media, gender stereotyping, racism, the media connection to militarism, advertising /consumerism and the economics of the mass media industry.

But more, much more is needed. One quarterly magazine is not enough. Nor is the one-way conversation from editor-to-readers an effective process for stimulating either personal or societal change. And in this electronic era, neither is print the most effective medium!

Recognizing the need for new thinking in this area and national leadership in the U.S. in the whole field of media education, Media&Values evolved from M.A.R.C. in 1989 and was legally reorganized as the Center for Media and Values. Structured as a membership organization for both individuals (U.S.$30) and local institutions (churches, schools, etc. — U.S.$75), the Center was established to develop and promote

• a new way of thinking about the influence and impact of mass media in our time;
• new curriculum resources for educating adults and young people to become more knowledgeable and selective media users;
• a vision and a practical program for media literacy in the U.S. in the 1990's.

Immediate projects include packaging each issue of the magazine with a Leader's Guide to create a "Media and Values Workshop Kit" on a specific media theme: sexism in the media, bias in the news, etc. Learning a lesson from T-A-T, the kits will be affordably-priced and designed so that any experienced teacher or youth director can use them with adult or youth audiences. The membership program will also include a newsletter and the nurturing of a network of educators in both religious and public school education.

The focus of the kits is not so much the resource materials themselves as the open-ended process recommended to empower participants to become more conscious of their media use and more selective in their future media choices. Unlike T-A-T or traditional media curriculum units, Media and Values Workshop Kits are being created as a launching pad for leader/group interaction using Freire's four-step circle of praxis: Awareness — Analysis — Reflection — Action. Each kit is a ready-to-use resource to help groups become aware of the media environment in which we all swim and to examine — and challenge — the underlying messages, assumptions and worldview of our mass mediated society.

Vision for the 90's

Long term, the Center will also serve as a "think tank" and resource center to focus questions, organize conferences and provide a public voice for the urgency of media literacy in the U.S. Already the Center has established, in its small Los Angeles office, a major resource/research library on media literacy and social issues in the media with an indexing system that, when finalized, should be a major contribution to the field. The Center is also working with the Aspen Institute for Communications and Society to organize in 1991 a National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy: Definitions, Visions and Strategies for the 1990's. Such a national policy conference is crucial if media literacy is to be accorded the attention — and funding — needed to become broadbased.

Which brings up a final consideration: what is the appropriate setting for effective programs of media literacy?

In the United States, the establishment of media literacy as a course of study in the public school system is already problematic. Compared to many other countries, the U.S. educational system is controlled at the state level rather than nationally — and there are 50 autonomous states. So de facto establishing a national curriculum (as has been done in some European countries) is impossible. There are influential states (e.g. California or Wisconsin) but effective widespread implementation of media literacy curricula in the either the public or private schools is going to take a long, long time.

But the U.S. does have a tremendous heritage of community, parental and family activism at the local level through churches and synagogues, youth programs, community and service organizations of all kinds. It is in these arenas that the most profound social revolutions have begun: the Civil Rights movement, feminist consciousness-raising, the peace movement. As DeTocqueville pointed out in the 1830's and Robert Bellah reiterated more recently in Habits of the Heart, this quality of "community" is one of the strengths of the American experiment in democracy.

The U.S. could perhaps best contribute to media literacy in the world by pioneering methods of media awareness education that are community-centered and family-based. And developing media literacy as a "parenting skill" ultimately influences the locus — the home — where informed media choices must take place — and be taught to the coming generations.