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 MEDIA LITERACY: AN ALTERNATIVE TO CENSORSHIP Second edition, revised and updated, © 2003. This report may be reproduced in its entirety as long as the Free Expression Policy Project is credited, a link to the Project's Web site is provided, and no charge is imposed. The report may not be reproduced in part or in altered form, or if a fee is charged, without our permission. Please let us know if you reprint. Authors of the Report: Marjorie Heins & Christina Cho Thanks to Frank Baker, Cary Bazalgette, Wally Bowen, David Considine, Barry Duncan, Gary Ferrington, Bob McCannon, Marieli Rowe, Elizabeth Thoman, and Patricia Wright for helpful comments. Table of Contents Introduction: Why Media Literacy Education is Preferable to Censorship I. What is Media Literacy Education? II. Media Literacy in the U.S.: A Brief History EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The purpose of this report is to inform the public and policymakers
about media literacy education and its superiority to TV ratings, Internet
filters, "indecency" laws, and other efforts to censor the ideas
and information available to the young. The report concludes with the
following policy recommendations:
Introduction: Why Media Literacy Education is Preferable to Censorship From the early days of radio and movies to the vast resources of today's
World Wide Web, the mass media have been an object of fascination for
youth. Yet parents, educators, and youth advocates have long been uneasy
about many of the media messages that children and teenagers encounter.
Popular culture can glamorize violence, irresponsible sex, junk food,
drugs, and alcohol; it can reinforce stereotypes about race, gender, sexual
orientation, and class; it can prescribe the lifestyle to which one should
aspire, and the products one must buy to attain it. Thus, it isn't surprising that calls to censor the mass media in the
interest of protecting youth have been a mainstay of American politics
for many years. Attempts to censor gangster movies in the 1930s, crime
comics in the 1950s, and TV violence today have produced an almost unending
series of laws, regulations, and proposals for restricting the art, information,
and entertainment available to youth. The advent of the Internet - a medium
in which young people are often better versed than their elders - has
only intensified these concerns. There are many reasons why censorship is an unsatisfactory response to
concerns about the mass media and its effects on youth. Foremost is the
First Amendment, which protects the ability of youngsters as well as adults
to read, watch, listen, access ideas, and think about them. This First
Amendment protection is not simply a legal technicality to be overcome
if possible by laws or policies cleverly crafted to avoid constitutional
pitfalls. The right to explore art and ideas is basic to a free society.
Without it, children and adolescents cannot grow into the thoughtful,
educated citizens who are essential to a functioning democracy. There are also practical reasons why censorship to "protect"
youth is a bad idea. First, it is difficult for people to agree on what
should be censored, and to define it in terms that are clear enough to
put publishers and distributors on notice of what is banned. Many people
point to "violence in the media," "extreme violence,"
or "gratuitous violence" as inappropriate and harmful to children.
But these are elastic and subjective concepts. And most of those who think
that "media violence" is bad for kids acknowledge that they
don't mean to include televised versions of Shakespeare, Sophocles, or
Saving Private Ryan. Context counts for everything in art and entertainment: how is the violence
presented; what are the consequences; what are the ambiguities in the
story? There is no way that a censorship law or a simplistic letter-or-number
rating system can make these judgments. As media scholar Henry Jenkins
has observed, because different youngsters react very differently to the
mythology, symbols, and stories in popular entertainment, "universalizing
claims are fundamentally inadequate in accounting for media's social and
cultural impact."1 Censorship also creates taboos that make the forbidden material more
attractive. Curious youngsters will defy the bans - making their way into
R-rated movies, de-programming v-chips and Internet filters, sneaking
looks at dad's Hustler or mom's Playgirl. Indeed, it sometimes
seems that censoring youth is more about sending them a message of social
disapproval than about actually preventing them from reading or viewing
everything that might be thought age-inappropriate or psychologically
damaging. But if the idea is to disapprove bad values and inculcate good
ones, and more importantly, to teach youngsters how to make these judgments
for themselves, then there are more effective ways than censorship to
go about it. Here is where media literacy education comes in. It not only teaches
students how media messages are made and how they differ from reality,
but it shows them how to analyze those messages, whether they involve
commercial advertising, ethnic and gender stereotypes, violence, sexual
decision-making, or other complex issues. As a White House report recently
noted, media literacy empowers young people, not only to understand and
evaluate the ideas found in popular culture, but "to be positive
contributors to society, to challenge cynicism and apathy and to serve
as agents of social change."2 Whatever the effectiveness
of censorship, it can't accomplish this. Education in media literacy is
thus not simply an alternative to censorship; it is far preferable to
censorship, for it enhances rather than curtails young people's intellectual
growth and their development into critically thinking adults. This report presents a summary of media literacy education - its history; its different educational currents; and its implementation in the United States and abroad. It begins with an introduction to the different strands and philosophies in the media literacy movement; then gives a brief history of the movement, from early concerns over commercial advertising and media violence to sophisticated programs that provide youngsters not only with critical insights but with opportunities to learn and problem-solve through creating their own media. The report then describes some of the major groups involved in media literacy today, as well as developments in a number of states and in Canada, Great Britain, and Australia, which are far ahead of the U.S. in incorporating media literacy into basic education. The report concludes with public-policy recommendations for broad, coordinated media literacy education, free of corporate influence or control, and fashioned with an understanding of the complex role that popular culture plays in the lives of youth. I. What is Media Literacy Education? To be media literate is, simply put, to possess the critical thinking
skills needed to "read" mass media communications, be they advertisements
featuring sophisticated-looking women smoking cigarettes, quick-cut shootout
scenes in action films, or coverage of far-off wars on the evening news.
Rather than being passive consumers of movies, TV shows, and video games,
or looking at them as neutral vehicles for information possessing some
valid claim to authority or truth, students learn that media "realities"
are "constructed" - whether to produce an adrenalin rush, sell
a product, or reflect a social or cultural idea. They may also learn about
the economic concentration of today's mass media, and the ways that large
media corporations censor and control information. In the U.S., media literacy education has been incorporated into English
language arts, social studies, and health education courses; it is also
sometimes a discrete course of study. Most programs include class discussions
on media production techniques, narrative elements such as characterization
and symbolism, and structure of the media industry. Many supplement classroom
lessons with hands-on projects, calling on students to create their own
advertisements, public service spots, or video games. After-school programs,
youth arts or journalism projects, and church groups also provide media
literacy education. Efforts to introduce media literacy education have been frustrated at
times by the notion that popular culture is fundamentally less enriching
or edifying than traditional curriculum subjects. At different points
in the 1980s and '90s, "back to basics" attitudes took hold
in the U.S., Canada, and England - favoring traditional, conservative
pedagogy and the avoidance of educational "frills." In these
climates, media literacy tends to be one of the first subjects dropped.
But as media literacy leader David Considine writes, the role of mass
media "in shaping public perception and public policy" cannot
be ignored. He quotes the educator Ernest Boyer: "'It is no longer
enough to simply read and write. Students must also become literate in
the understanding of visual messages.'" They must learn "'how
to spot a stereotype, isolate a social cliche and distinguish facts from
propaganda.'"3 After decades of relative neglect or sporadic support, the U.S. government
today recognizes the importance of media literacy. State education departments
have incorporated media literacy and critical thinking in their curricular
standards. But the comprehensiveness and sophistication of the different
programs around the country vary enormously, and the federal financial
commitment is still quite small. In the continuing absence of a strong national mandate, various private
groups have stepped in to supply information and resources, most often
by publishing curricula, conducting training workshops, and organizing
conferences. The diversity of these media literacy organizations reflects
the multi-faceted concerns of the movement. University-based and scholar-led
groups such as the Center for Media Studies at Rutgers University and
the Graduate Program in Media Literacy at Appalachian State University
are the source of much of the theoretical discourse on media literacy,
and also provide information, training, and resources. Citizens for Media
Literacy in North Carolina concentrates on the potential for media literacy
to foster more active citizenship. The New Mexico Media Literacy Project
teaches kids to recognize and resist the consumerism and often addictive
behavior promoted by TV advertising. San Francisco's Just Think Foundation
targets lower-income youngsters who are deemed "at risk" for
crime, violence, or drug use. In 2001, the Alliance for a Media Literate
America formed to unite many of these groups, with the goal of "bringing
media literacy education to all 60 million students in the United States,
their parents, their teachers, and others who care about youth."4 The communications industry has not been oblivious to these developments,
and some companies have initiated media literacy programs of their own,
or have offered funding to media educators. This issue of corporate funding
has set off one of the major debates in the media literacy field. TV networks
including ABC, CBS, NBC, the Discovery Channel, and, in a highly controversial
instance, the commercial provider of classroom news and advertisements,
Channel One, have sponsored media literacy projects. The situation is
rife with conflict of interest, as corporate-sponsored programs will inevitably
steer clear of too-stringent a critique of their benefactors. As Professors
Justin Lewis and Sut Jhally say (describing a media literacy program sponsored
by Continental Cablevision), the company's notion of "informed citizenship
means little more than a weekly perusal of TV Guide."5
The conflict over corporate sponsorship also highlights a philosophical
rift between those who focus on analysis of media content and those who
view the structure of the media industry as an equally important concern.
Wally Bowen of Citizens for Media Literacy observes that the "structural
issue of media ownership" is one of the major challenges for media
literacy educators, especially given the increasing consolidation of the
communications industry, which is leaving less and less room for grassroots
or dissenting voices.6 Media literacy leaders also disagree over fundamental objectives. Many
oppose the "protectionist" or "inoculationist" philosophy,
which sees media education primarily as a way to protect children from
bad messages - and in the process, denigrate their favorite TV programs,
music videos, and video games. The result, they fear, is decreased student
interest and ineffective education. "Many teachers at both the K-12
and university levels have found that students are unresponsive to the
idea that they are helpless victims of media influence who need to be
rescued from the excesses and evils of their interest in popular culture,"
reports media literacy pioneer and Temple University professor Renee Hobbs.7
Others point out that the protectionist approach "privileges"
certain texts over others, and substitutes value judgments for truly critical
analyses.8 Yet Bob McCannon, head of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, asserts
that it is "a myth that 'protectionist' media literacy does not work.
On the contrary, when people are inspired to analyze their hypermediated
culture and live a life for themselves and not Coke, Mastercharge, Budweiser,
consumerism, fashion ads, Big Media, Big Tobacco and the corporate hegemony,
it is the most powerful motivator for kids and citizens."9
Media literacy is admittedly "more than a vaccine," McCannon
says; very few successful programs "are just bashing and protecting."
On the contrary, they "respect kids' views, encourage questioning,
and value popular media." But they also criticize mass media producers
when they deserve it. Marieli Rowe of the National Telemedia Council replies
that McCannon's approach "has powerful popular appeal but it does
not educate young people to acquire the ability for autonomous critical
thinking. Instead, it successfully indoctrinates them to accept preconceived
value judgments."10 The tension between simple protectionism and more nuanced understanding
of media's influence will continue, if only because the protectionist
approach is directly responsive to concerns about media violence, drugs,
and other subjects, and thus more likely to receive government funding
and popular support. One of the challenges for media literacy education,
then, is to build public support for approaches that go beyond simple
protectionism and teach youngsters to adopt an overall more critical stance
toward the dizzying variety of popular culture available to them. In this scenario, media literacy is an important response to a media-saturated society but is more than simply a vaccine against sexual risk-taking, gender stereotypes, or violence on TV. In much the same way that analyzing The Canterbury Tales might lead students to discover how Chaucer used poetry to make a statement about medieval ideas of morality or class, media literacy education can teach students about the subtle ways their own world is presented to them. In the process, it can not only relieve pressures for government censorship, but empower youth to defend their own free expression rights. II. Media Literacy in the U.S.: A Brief History The Beginnings Until the 1970s, the U.S. media literacy movement consisted primarily
of scattered, small-scale efforts. In the 1930s, for example, a group
of English teachers, working in cooperation with the pioneers of public
radio, founded the Wisconsin Association for Better Broadcasting. They
circulated a list of "good" radio programs, along with "helps"
to increase listeners' "awareness, critical evaluation, and appreciation."
In 1953, this group became the American Council for Better Broadcasts.
In the early 1960s, it drafted a basic syllabus for analyzing TV shows
and conducted summer workshops in curricular development.11
Meanwhile, media literacy pioneers such as Father John Culkin at Fordham
and Tony Hodgkinson at Boston University wrote articles and conducted
summer institutes that inspired the first generation of media scholars.
Educator Barry Duncan writes: "It was John Culkin who was responsible
for bringing Marshall McLuhan to Fordham for a year, providing him with
the audience and publicity that his revolutionary ideas on communication
deserved."12 In 1969, the National Education Association passed a resolution recommending
critical viewing curricula to counteract the presumed ill effects of media
violence.13 The same year, scholars James Anderson and
Milton Ploghoft devised one of the first comprehensive curricula for a
consortium of Ohio school systems. Called the Critical Receivership Skills
Project, Anderson and Ploghoft's model incorporated media literacy objectives
into social studies and language arts classes.14 In 1970, New York City's public television station, WNET, began holding
workshops in local schools to help educators incorporate television in
the classroom. The station would later augment its program with assistance
from the U.S. Office of Education. Also in 1970, another Anderson and
Ploghoft venture, the Television Viewer Skills Project, began in Eugene,
Oregon. The students particularly enjoyed being able to observe the mass
media's "persuasion techniques."15 Finally,
in 1970 the National Council of Teachers of English passed a resolution
encouraging teachers to include "non-print texts" (i.e., film
and television) in their classrooms.16 In 1974, two significant media literacy projects were launched outside
public schools. First, the Media Action Research Center (MARC), supported
by government and nonprofit groups, was established in New York City.
Religious in orientation and thus favoring, according to media education
scholar James A. Brown, "a 'values approach' rather than a neutral
one," MARC undertook extensive curricular projects, beginning with
"Television Awareness Training" in 1977. This program examined
how TV portrayed ethnic minorities and presented issues like premarital
sex and homosexuality, and highlighted the disparity between Christian
values and prevalent media messages.17 Second, three researchers began a two-year project at Harvard University
to study the efficacy of media literacy education. Funded by the U.S.
Office of Child Development, Aimee Dorr and her associates tested three
curricula on elementary-age children in six hour-long sessions largely
featuring game- and role-playing. As a "control," they used
an established "social reasoning" curriculum that aimed to teach
the basics of social interaction, and tested it against two media literacy
programs: an "industry curriculum" which highlighted the artificiality
and economic motivation of entertainment programs (teaching, for instance,
that "plots are made up" and "money for programs comes
from advertisers"); and a "process curriculum," designed
to show students how to distinguish between truth and the fantasy or skewed
reality on television. One focus of the study was whether media literacy
could decrease children's susceptibility to skewed portrayals of race. The researchers first evaluated the children's racial attitudes through
a test that asked them to match different descriptive terms, half positive
and half negative, with photographs of people of different races, sexes,
and ages. After completing their six-hour courses, all children watched
an episode of the sitcom The Jeffersons that the researchers had
decided set forth "mildly uncomplimentary views of blacks."
After the program, the students were given a variety of tests to measure
media literacy skills, including an interview and a modified version of
the attitude exam to gauge how much The Jeffersons had influenced
their views. The researchers found that the children who had received one of the media
literacy curricula were better able to analyze the program's content -
to distinguish, for example, between its real and fictional aspects. They
concluded that even the brief, six-hour exposure to media literacy education
was effective in teaching the students to "understand and evaluate
television content."18 The children's real-world
notions of race did not change markedly after the six sessions, though.
Racial attitudes are bred over time as a result of many factors, and it
may be too much to expect a brief media literacy course to change them. In 1976, New York's East Syracuse-Minoa school system, in consultation
with Milton Ploghoft, initiated a series of voluntary summer workshops
for teachers. Each summer from then until 1979, the teachers met for five
half-days to collaborate on curriculum design and basic television education.
These efforts allowed educators to form clear objectives, but they relied,
in James Brown's words, solely "on the initiative and commitment
of self-selected teachers," with little "systematic integration."19 By the time of the last East Syracuse workshop, school district 91 in
Idaho Falls, Idaho, had decided to integrate media literacy into its social
studies and language arts courses. The curriculum was developed under
Anderson and Ploghoft's direction and financed by the Idaho Falls Department
of Education through a federal curriculum innovation program. The new
critical-viewing course spanned grades 3-6 and was to be taught in two
1½-hour sessions per week. Three of Idaho Falls's six elementary
schools adopted it. Teachers in the Idaho program used a standardized set of audiovisual
materials and a manual, which was published in 1981 as The Way We See
It: A Project to Develop Analytical Televiewing Skills. In grade 3,
students learned to analyze commercials; in grades 4 and 5, they assessed
entertainment programs (learning, for instance, to spot stereotypes);
and in grade 6, they studied TV news. In every grade, students kept journals
of their television viewing and thus reflected on their media consumption,
and at the end of each year, they produced their own commercial, entertainment,
or news spots. A final portion of the program consisted of "home
components," which encouraged critical discussion among students
and their parents. ("... Tonight invite your parents to sit and watch
a television program with you. After the program tell your parents your
views on the program. What was the theme or value of the story? ... Were
the conflicts realistic?" and so on). Anderson and Ploghoft later evaluated the Idaho program's effectiveness
using a "Television Information Game," which required students
at each grade level to watch and analyze brief televised segments. They
found the third grade students demonstrated dramatic improvement in television-related
cognitive skills; the older students made noticeable but less marked progress.
Among Anderson's conclusions - with which Brown agrees - is that media
literacy should be introduced early.20 Another study began around this time in Connecticut. Yale professors
Dorothy and Jerome Singer introduced critical viewing into grade 3-5 language
arts classrooms in order (among other goals) to help children "understand
how television influences feelings, ideas, self-concept, and identification,"
"learn about the purpose and types of commercials, including public
service or political announcements," "learn what aspects of
a program are real, and how fantasy or pretend elements are created,"
and "become aware that TV rarely shows someone recovering from an
act of violence or the aggressor being punished." The Singers gave 134 children an eight-session course: an introduction
to television, "Reality and Fantasy on Television," "Camera
Effects and Special Effects," "Commercials and the Television
Business," "Identification with Television Characters,"
"Stereotypes on Television," "Violence and Aggression,"
and "How Viewers Can Influence Television." Homework required
the students to rewrite commercials and come up with alternate ways to
resolve conflicts that ended in violence on TV shows. At the end of four
weeks, the children who received media literacy instruction scored significantly
higher than children in a control group on tests that included questions
such as "How does television make characters disappear?" and
"Who pays for television programs?"21 In 1980, the Singers conducted a similar study among younger students, using more games and child-oriented activities (a puppet show, for example). Before and after completing the course, students took a test to measure their familiarity with camera and editing techniques, their awareness of props, and their ability to distinguish between "real," "cartoon," "realistic," and "impossible" television figures. Questions included: "Are commercials part of the TV story?" and "If a famous person advertises a toy on TV, does it mean the toy will never break?" The researchers found that "on almost all measures, children's understanding of TV was significantly enhanced by the curriculum."22 The Government Gets Involved The first major federal initiative in media literacy began during the
presidency of Jimmy Carter, in 1978, when the Office of Education and
the Library of Congress held a conference on "Television, the Book
and the Classroom," then called for funding proposals for curricular
projects to equip students with critical viewing skills. The following
year, four programs were selected for funding:
By then, however, the program had become the object of considerable criticism,
having received a Golden Fleece in 1978 - the "award" established
by Senator William Proxmire to call attention to misused tax dollars -
"for spending $219,592 to develop a 'curriculum package' to teach
college students how to watch television."24 Amid
the flurry of negative press, the government eventually canceled its contract
with Boston University and the project officially ended in mid-1981 -
not long, as Rutgers University professor Robert Kubey has noted, after
Ronald Reagan, whose campaign proposals had included the dissolution of
the barely two-year-old Department of Education, assumed the Presidency.25 Indeed, government funding for all four federally supported media literacy programs ceased by 1982. The recession of the mid-1980s led, as media literacy consultant Kathleen Tyner put it, to "a widespread belief that students should be trained to compete in the global marketplace. Because media education was linked in the public's mind with the recreational technology of television, the critical viewing curriculum was seen as an unnecessary frill."26 "Back-to-basics" became the dominant theme in U.S. education policy. What Brown has called the "watershed years" for media literacy programs were drawing to a close, as curricula faded from use and published materials fell out of print.27 The 1980s Despite the retrenchment, a few new projects emerged in the early 1980s,
including the U.S. Catholic Conference's 1982 curriculum, The Media
Mirror: A Study Guide on Christian Values on Television, and the National
Telemedia Council's "Kids-4," a TV channel created for and by
9-13 year-olds. (NTC was the successor organization to the American Council
for Better Broadcasts.) The National PTA also announced in 1982 that it
would publish four curricula for critical television viewing, aimed at
different grade levels. These had been in the works since 1979, when the
PTA's then-two-year-old TV Action Center (which had previously concentrated
on evaluating various programs' appropriateness for children) began developing
a curriculum and accompanying workbook.28 The first two PTA curricula, for grades K-2 and 3-5, appeared in 1982.
Each included a teachers' manual and student activity book focusing on
TV's portrayal of the family and prodding students to compare their own
home life with media depictions. The purpose, as Brown has written, was
"to wean students from TV depictions as the ideal or normative or
even as representing real life." Sporadically placed amid these lessons
were segments relating to broadcast techniques, scheduling, ratings, and
the roles of TV's executive, creative, and technical staffs. Brown comments
that the program focused too much on the issue of families; teaching about
"how television operates and affects program content as well as viewers'
perceptions of the real world was done indirectly, at best."29
The PTA did not complete the two upper-level curricula. 1982 also witnessed a major global development: UNESCO held an International
Symposium on Media Education in Grünwald, Germany, which drew delegates
from 19 countries and ended with a "Declaration on Media Education."
The document called on "the competent authorities" to "initiate
and support comprehensive media education programs - from pre-school to
university level, and in adult education," to develop training courses,
stimulate research and development, and "strengthen the actions undertaken
or envisaged by UNESCO and which aim at encouraging international cooperation
in media education."30 UNESCO later published a
book on media literacy and organized an international colloquium in Vienna.
Its Declaration is often cited in support of broader media education.31 In 1985, Canadian media literacy expert John Pungente of the Jesuit Communication
Project issued his own set of global recommendations. Pungente observed
media literacy programs in 23 nations and collected questionnaires from
363 Jesuit-run secondary schools. He concluded that "authorities
must give clear support to such programs by mandating the teaching of
Media Studies," and making sure that curricula are developed, materials
are available, and in-service training is provided.32
By the late 1980s, media literacy in the U.S. was regaining momentum.
In 1987, Kathleen Tyner established the San Francisco-based Strategies
for Media Literacy, which developed media education resources, organized
teacher training workshops, and published a quarterly journal, Strategies.
Two years later, the Catholic sister and activist Elizabeth Thoman founded
the Center for Media and Values (since 1994, the Center for Media Literacy)
in Los Angeles. This organization grew out of the 12-year-old quarterly
magazine Media & Values, which Thoman started as a graduate
school project in the mid-'70s at the University of Southern California.
Media & Values became one of the leading journals in the field,
promoting a "social analysis" approach to media issues adapted
from the work of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator. Thoman originally designed the publication for youth leaders and adult educators in the liberal religious community - Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. Funding came from a patchwork of subscription income, foundation grants, and donations from social justice initiatives of Catholic religious orders and Protestant denominations. From 1983-1989, Media & Values was owned by the Protestant-led Media Action Research Center - but as the world of public education warmed to the idea of media literacy in the late '80s, the magazine was reincorporated in 1989 and evolved into a non-sectarian non-profit educational enterprise, publishing the first generation of media literacy curricula in the United States. The magazine published 63 issues and nine "Media Literacy Workshop Kits" on topics such as sexism in the media and "Parenting in a TV Age" before its demise in 1993.33 Expansion in the 1990s Whether because of increased concern with mass media content, a changed
political situation, or other factors, media literacy took off again in
the early 1990s. A new curriculum appeared in 1991: Kathleen Tyner and
Donna Lloyd-Kolkin's Media and You: An Elementary Media Literacy Curriculum.
(Lloyd-Kolkin was director of the government-funded Critical Television
Viewing Skills Project at the Far West Laboratory in San Francisco.) Media
and You consisted of lesson plans and activities in English and Spanish
for grades K-5. The course had five units: the definition of mass media,
production techniques, entertainment, advertising, and information.34
The following year, David Considine and Gail Haley published a comprehensive
text, Visual Messages: Integrating Imagery Into Instruction, which
advocated an interdisciplinary approach of integrating media literacy
concepts into existing curriculum, and linking them with broad goals like
responsible citizenship, and with cooperative learning, multicultural
education, and critical thinking skills.35 Also in 1992, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) generated
ten recommendations for effective media education - focusing, understandably,
on the needs of teachers. The Council called for accreditation standards
in critical analysis of media, "treated seriously through teacher
workshops, training, materials and guidelines" and "the empowerment
of teachers through networking."36 National media literacy conferences were also coming into vogue. The
Southwest Alternate Media Project, with Tyner's Strategies for Media Literacy
and the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), a coalition
of nonprofit media arts groups, organized a 1992 conference in Austin
which resulted in a new National Alliance for Media Education (NAME).37
Although this group is now dormant, it helped raise awareness of media
literacy and strengthen ties between media artists and educators. One
of its projects was to create a media arts directory, with funding from
the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).38 This NEA
participation was important because it signaled a recognition not only
that film, TV, and video were now the sites of significant artistic achievement,
but that media literacy and media arts skills go hand in hand. A second conference, in December 1992, was sponsored by the Aspen Institute
and brought together 25 leaders in the field. The participants in this
seminal event established a definition of media literacy and a framework
for future programs. As communications professor Patricia Aufderheide
noted in the conference report, the landscape of media literacy in the
U.S. had until then been characterized by "a blizzard of idiosyncratic
projects, typically driven by the passion of individual teachers and organizers."
What it lacked were "a central mission or mandate," infrastructure
(that is, "an operating foundation, a professional association, a
central database and network"), "legitimacy," "basic
information" on the state of media literacy education, and evaluation
of results. The Aspen conference accordingly identified four immediate needs: data,
publicity, infrastructure, and a collaborative network that would link
people from the worlds of public policy, educational reform, arts, and
public television. To meet these needs, the participants established task
forces and resolved to set up a test site for media education, selecting
New Mexico because its official state standards already featured a media
literacy requirement.39 The Aspen conference reflected the movement's new emphasis on staff development.
It seemed clear that without teacher training, simply inserting a media
literacy segment into a language arts program and using "off the
shelf" curricular materials would not be effective. The conference
report noted that Appalachian State University in North Carolina had taken
the lead by requiring all teachers in training to take media literacy
courses.40 Now, a year after the Aspen conference, Renee
Hobbs organized a week-long staff development program at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education. This was the first of many such programs; others
were held at Columbia University, New York University, and Minneapolis's
Walker Art Center.41 Hobbs by this time was also involved in a controversial media literacy
initiative in Billerica, Massachusetts. In 1992, the Billerica school
district agreed to broadcast to its students Channel One's 12 minutes
of daily current events, along with two minutes of teen-oriented advertising.
In exchange, the company provided schools with free TVs, VCRs, and satellite
equipment. Channel One had been widely criticized as a cynical and educationally
dubious marketing scheme that sold a captive audience of schoolchildren
to advertisers. As the company itself boasted in a press release, its
programming "is a marketer's secret weapon ... an unparalleled way
to reach a massive teen audience in a highly relevant, important and uncluttered
environment."42 In response to criticism from the national PTA, National Education Association,
and National School Board Association, Billerica commissioned Hobbs to
develop a staff training program that would use Channel One as the basis
of media literacy instruction. This "Billerica Initiative" called
upon participating teachers to enroll in a 2½-year master's program
in media literacy that Hobbs developed in association with Fitchburg State
College and a regional professional development center.43
Hobbs eventually became a paid consultant to Channel One and created Media
Matters, a series of lessons for Channel One viewers. The text taught
basic techniques such as translating the messages behind advertising and
assessing the credibility of "soft" versus "hard"
news. Channel One was not alone among TV entrepreneurs in sponsoring media
literacy programs. In 1992, the National Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences (NATAS) commissioned Dorothy and Jerome Singer to design a media
literacy curriculum as a basis for "collaborative partnerships between
broadcasters and educators nationwide." This "Creating Critical
Viewers Program" can be downloaded for free from the NATAS Web site.44 The mid-1990s also saw renewed interest from the federal government.
Part of the impetus was the continuing political heat focused on media
violence. During the summer of 1993, the U.S. Departments of Justice,
Education, and Health and Human Services (HHS) co-hosted a two-day forum,
"Safeguarding Our Youth: Violence Prevention for Our Nation's Children,"
which drew a small group of media professionals, educators, community
leaders, and students to address "our growing culture of violence."
Among the directives in the resulting report was that "[b]road-based
media literacy education needs to become a priority in the U.S. and implemented
in an inter-agency, interdisciplinary approach" that should involve
not only the Departments of Education and HHS, but the Federal Communications
Commission and Federal Trade Commission.45 It was unclear
how these last two agencies were to participate in developing media literacy
programs, given that both are primarily regulatory, but one clue could
be found in the report's suggestion that students be encouraged to send
postcards complaining about offensive programming to the FCC, which has
the power to grant or deny broadcast licenses. In 1994, President Clinton signed the "Goals 2000: Educate America
Act," which established a National Education Standards and Improvement
Council to review and certify state standards for educational content
and student performance. The Department of Education provided more than
$400 million to states and local school districts to develop performance
and content standards in nine core subjects: English, math, science, foreign
languages, civics and government, economics, history, geography, and the
arts. The arts standards included media literacy concepts at all primary
and secondary levels.46 But since the standards were
voluntary (albeit with the incentive of federal funding), media literacy
education continued to vary enormously from one school system to the next. The federal government's interest was essentially protectionist; it wanted
to "inoculate" adolescents against unhealthy media messages
about sexuality, violence, nutrition, body image, and alcohol, tobacco,
and drug use. In 1995, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP)
issued grants to promote media literacy in these areas, and the White
House convened a meeting of media literacy and substance abuse prevention
groups. Two years later, CSAP was one of several federal agencies to incorporate
media literacy in their drug-prevention programs. (Others included the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the
Office of Justice Programs at the Department of Justice.) CSAP balanced
its protectionist approach with "lofty goals about community involvement
and citizen participation."47 In 1995, more than 300 scholars and activists converged on Appalachian
State University for the most expansive media literacy conference to date,
organized by the National Telemedia Council and ASU. The White House sent
representatives, and according to conference chair David Considine, a
post-conference meeting on campus fostered cooperation between government
drug-prevention officials and the media literacy community. The event
was repeated the next year and eventually grew into the National Media
Education Conference, sponsored by a new organization, the Partnership
for Media Education (PME). Founded by Renee Hobbs, Elizabeth Thoman, Nancy
Chase Garcia of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and Lisa Reisberg
of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the PME hosted the National Media
Education Conference annually and also sponsored events for U.S. attendees
of the International Media Literacy Summit 2000 in Ontario, Canada. Soon
after, PME evolved into the Alliance for a Media Literate America.48 Educators were meanwhile continuing to assess media literacy programs.
A major study was undertaken in 1995-96 when Renee Hobbs and her colleague
Richard Frost gave separate "teams" of 9th
graders in a Massachusetts school district four different curricula:
At the end of 12 weeks, the school district tested the four groups, using
a 1992 Channel One news segment on Hurricane Andrew. The test asked the
students to identify, among other things, the news item's target audience,
the strategies it employed to grab the audience's attention, and what
information had been omitted. The Chameleon team, which had received the most comprehensive and coordinated curriculum, "significantly outperformed" the other groups in media analysis skills. For example, just a third of the Red team students correctly identified the "author" of the news segment as Channel One, compared to 72% of the Chameleon team. Hobbs and Frost concluded that the most effective media literacy program integrates skills across all subject areas, and includes both analysis and production activities. Simply exploring media violence or substance abuse "in a short set of lesson plans using off-the-shelf curricula," they said, "did not appear to develop effective analysis skills."49 Media Literacy Comes of Age By the late '90s, both academic institutions and state and federal agencies
had begun to recognize the importance of media literacy. Rutgers University
established the Center for Media Studies in 1996 with Robert Kubey at
the helm. Among the center's objectives is to produce "new collaborative
research and scholarship, teaching, and outreach efforts."50
A master's program was instituted in 1999 at Appalachian State under the
direction of David Considine, who had worked with the media literacy movement
in Australia before moving to the U.S. and who pioneered an interdisciplinary
approach that infused media competencies into different degrees and departments.51
Also in 1999, Robert Kubey and Frank Baker of the Media Literacy Clearinghouse
in South Carolina published a survey of the extent to which state education
standards incorporated media literacy concepts. Up to that point, says
Baker, "no one had conducted such a study, so no one really knew
how widespread state standards for media literacy were."52
Kubey and Baker built on earlier work by Considine, who had initiated
the idea of looking for media literacy concepts in existing state curriculum
standards around the time of the 1995 conference at Appalachian State.53 By the late '90s, influential journals were devoting whole issues to
media literacy. Both the International Communication Association's Journal
of Communication and NCTE's English Journal published symposia
on pedagogy, political progress, and philosophical differences in the
media literacy world. The Journal of Adolescent Health published
a special supplement on "youth and media," with articles that
were largely protectionist in orientation. The National Telemedia Council
began to place its major focus on publishing Telemedium: The Journal
of Media Literacy three times a year.54 In 1999, the Channel One controversy and the question of corporate cooptation
of media literacy erupted again. Channel One was a major sponsor of the
National Media Education Conference that year in St. Paul, Minnesota,
to the dismay of several prominent media educators, who refused to attend.
Journalist Steven Manning reported that "angry conference attendees
... forced the meeting's organizers to hold a special session to defend
and debate Channel One's presence. And the controversy has hardly ended
there, spilling over into local media literacy meetings and discussion
groups."55 In one post-conference note to a media literacy listserv, Renee Hobbs
recounted how she had been "deeply troubled" by Channel One's
presence in classrooms when first approached by the Billerica School District,
but eventually found that it provided "regular daily opportunity
for a media literacy lesson." In particular, she said, Channel One's
teen-directed advertising made teachers acutely aware of the need to teach
media literacy skills. Hobbs accused "ivory tower" colleagues
of demonizing Channel One, which, she pointed out, was now received by
40% of U.S. secondary schools.56 Bob McCannon of the New Mexico Media Literacy Project responded to Hobbs:
"You, for better or worse and, undoubtedly, with the sincerest motives,
are now a paid part of the PR process."57 McCannon
told journalist Manning that "media literacy is being hijacked by
corporate interests who are using the movement to buy legitimacy and deflect
criticism of their products." Hobbs responded: "If I gave workshops
every day for the rest of my life, I could never reach the eight million
children Channel One reaches every day."58 While media literacy leaders argued over corporate sponsorship, the U.S.
government was renewing its interest, to the tune of nearly $1 million
in grants in 2000 from the Department of Education and the National Endowment
for the Arts. Media literacy, according to the DOE announcement, "refers
to the ability to understand and interpret the artistic content of images,
including violent messages, transmitted through the electronic media."
Priority was given to schools where at least ¾ of students came
from low-income families.59 The purpose of the NEA's
involvement was to bring community arts resources into the educational
process in order to help youngsters deconstruct messages and develop their
own voices through media arts.60 Ten programs in eight states received this federal funding during the
2000 fiscal year. Five of them - offered by schools in Los Angeles, Tampa,
Florida, Minneapolis, Española, New Mexico, and Providence, Rhode
Island - focused on counteracting the presumed effects of media violence.
The other five projects had a broader approach, seeking to address a range
of risks and issues that young people face. All the grants, according
to David Considine, represented "the protectionist paradigm and [did]
little to see ML as a player in citizenship."61
The following year, the NEA and DOE again collaborated, this time spending
$2 million on 17 grants, ten of them for continuing work by year 2000
grantees; the other seven to new programs. Among the new grantees was
the Center for Media Literacy (formerly the Center for Media and Values),
which joined with a Los Angeles elementary school, the Music Center of
Los Angeles County, and a local animation company to train students and
teachers in critical thinking, the arts, and media production.63
Although this funding of a group with strong Catholic and Protestant participation
raised concerns about government entanglement with religion, CML's founder
Elizabeth Thoman says that except for curricula specifically intended
for religious education, the Center's materials have never had a sectarian
slant, and that by 1993, its funding base had shifted to predominantly
nonreligious foundations.64 For the 2002 fiscal year, the federal government allocated an additional
$2 million to the 17 existing grantees but failed to fund any new projects.
Shelton Allen of the Department of Education has suggested that this failure
reflected the difference between the George W. Bush Administration's educational
philosophy and that of its predecessor.65 Nevertheless, media literacy had come of age. A few months before the
fiscal year 2001 grants, Senator Thad Cochran introduced a resolution
designating March 2001 and 2002 as "Arts Education Month" and
explicitly linking art with media literacy by noting that arts education
stimulates many cognitive skills, including "critical thinking"
and "nimbleness in judgment."66 Although the
resolution probably reflected too utilitarian a view of the value of creative
arts to please all culture-lovers, it marked a significant advance from
the back-to-basics philosophy. Congress reaffirmed its commitment to arts education in early 2002 when
it passed President Bush's big education initiative, the "No Child
Left Behind Act of 2002." This massive addition to the 1965 Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, which broke new ground in terms of federal
involvement in state and local education policy, specifically allocated
funds for arts education and recognized the importance of integrating
it into the regular curriculum at both elementary and high school levels.67
Also in early 2002, the White House released a policy statement supporting
media literacy education - at least for purposes of teaching youngsters
about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. Summarizing a "Media Literacy
Summit" held the year before, the report acknowledged "the power
and influence of the media on America's youth" and argued for expanded
media literacy education to help them "gain skills to intelligently
navigate the media and filter the hundreds of messages they receive every
day." The report suggested three approaches: "parent-focused,"
Internet-focused, and "faith-based," but skirted the politically
charged question of whether government funding can be used for the third
approach, which involves the teaching of religious messages. The White House report recognized critical thinking and "healthy self-esteem" as key components of media literacy education, and emphasized the importance of respecting youngsters' intelligence and accepting their "pleasure in media use." "Don't 'bash' the media," it warned; instead, "acknowledge that the media are a powerful and amazing influence that can be used for positive and healthy ends. Media literate people more fully appreciate media's complexity, creativity and potential. They do not blame the media for society's problems."68 III. Media Literacy Today Media literacy in the U.S. today is a patchwork quilt of nonprofit advocacy groups, for-profit providers of curricular materials, and assorted state and local initiatives, a handful of which receive federal funding. Yet the movement is growing; new ideas and energy abound; and along with a multitude of youth arts and journalism projects, media literacy is increasingly understood to be a vital part of educating youth. Below are descriptions of the major media literacy organizations (we don't attempt to identify every organization concerned with the issue), of developments in four states, and of the international scene. Advocacy and Information Groups r National
Telemedia Council (www.nationaltelemediacouncil.org). The oldest national
media literacy organization, the National Telemedia Council (NTC) traces
its origins to the 1930s, with the founding of the Wisconsin Association
for Better Broadcasting, which evolved into the American Council for Better
Broadcasts (ACBB) in the 1950s. The ACBB became the National Telemedia
Council in 1983 and began working with teachers to introduce media literacy
into classrooms. Avoiding simplistic judgments on what programs are "good" or
"bad," the NTC promotes "a philosophy that values reflective
education and cooperation rather than confrontation with the media industry."
Still based in Madison, Wisconsin, the NTC publishes Telemedium: The
Journal of Media Literacy and coordinates workshops for educators
and parents. In November 2003, it sponsored a five-city interactive teleconference
on new directions in media literacy, with topics such as "New Media
and Digital Culture" and "Testing the Limits of Democracy."69
r Center For
Media Literacy formerly Center for Media and Values (www.medialit.org).
In 1989, Elizabeth Thoman's magazine Media & Values evolved
into the Center for Media and Values with the primary purpose of generating
and distributing media literacy curricula. Each of the Center's "Media
Literacy Workshop Kits" for teachers, community leaders, parenting
groups, and church or synagogue instructors corresponded to an issue of
Media & Values, ranging from the general ("How to Analyze
the News Media") to the more pointed ("Selling Addiction: A
Workshop Kit on Tobacco and Alcohol Advertising," "Images of
Conflict: Learning from Coverage of the Gulf War"). The kits included
lesson and activity plans, manuals and background material for teachers,
handouts, and videos. A 1992 collaboration with the National Catholic Educational Association
resulted in an ambitious curriculum kit, entitled "Catholic Connections
to Media Literacy." The next year, with assistance from the philanthropic
Carnegie Corporation and other foundations, the Center published Beyond
Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media, a comprehensive curriculum,
heavily based on a standardized set of video segments, for grades 4 through
teen/adult. Aiming to move audiences "from awareness to action, from
passivity to engagement, from denial to accepting responsibility for what
each of us can do as individuals, as parents, as citizens, as participants
of our media-dominated society," Beyond Blame calls on students
to examine violence in films, cartoons, music videos, news broadcasts,
and dramatic programs. Specific topics include the movies' representation
of heroism, images of violence against women, the effects of various editing
techniques, and students' own viewing habits.70 The year Beyond Blame was published, three Kansas City, Kansas,
after-school programs - held, respectively, at a Boys and Girls Club,
a Catholic parish, and a youth center for high-risk adolescents - piloted
the middle-school portion of the curriculum. According to a survey taken
at the beginning of the course, 17% of the 75 students had maintained
that violence was a "good way" to resolve conflicts; at the
end of eight weeks, this figure had fallen to 6.9%.71
In 1994, the Center renamed itself the Center for Media Literacy (CML),
reflecting the shift in its focus from publishing Media & Values
to developing curriculum. As books and video-based curricula began to
be published, the Center recognized the need for an efficient distribution
system to publicize and disseminate materials to schools and teachers.
From the first eight-page catalog featuring its own collection of Media
Literacy Workshop Kits, the Center's annual Resource Catalog has grown
to 40 pages and is now a definitive "illustrated bibliography"
of the field. The Center's president, Tessa Jolls, formed alliances with
two educational resource distributors, enlarging the Center's outreach
to more than a million teachers a year.72 The Center does not take a simplistically protectionist approach. One
of its case studies, "Establishing Media Literacy in a Catholic School
Setting," notes that "the heart of media literacy is informed
inquiry" and "media literacy is an alternative to censoring,
boycotting, or 'blaming the media.'" Thoman writes in another CML
article: "Because of each individual's age, upbringing and education,
no two people see the same movie or hear the same song on the radio. ...
This concept turns the tables on the idea of TV viewers as just passive
'couch potatoes.'"73 r Media Education
Foundation (www.mediaed.org/index_html). Founded in 1991 by Sut Jhally,
professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts, the Media
Education Foundation (MEF) aims to bolster media literacy in the face
of a communications landscape increasingly dominated by corporate media
giants and multinational mergers. The year before, Jhally had created
a 55-minute videotape culled from segments of music videos and with his
own narration, for use in his courses examining popular culture images
of sexism and violence. Titled Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Rock
Video, the video was at first circulated among Jhally's UMass colleagues,
but he eventually sold copies to communications and women's studies departments
at universities nationwide. MTV demanded that he stop distributing the
tapes and recall the already distributed ones, on the ground that he was
violating its copyrights. Jhally refused, arguing that his copying of
the video segments for the purpose of academic critique was legal under
the "fair use" provision in copyright law. MTV did not, in the
end, pursue legal action (in part, perhaps - as the MEF Web site suggested
- because the channel was in the midst of its own anti-censorship campaign
at the time). By 2002, MEF was producing and distributing more than 40 educational
videos, many with accompanying study guides. These included critiques
of media messages such as Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco,
Mickey Mouse Monopoly (which explores the ways race, gender, and class
are portrayed in Disney films), and Off the Straight and Narrow
(which looks at images of homosexuality in contemporary TV programs).
Other resources for media literacy educators included Getting the Message
Across, a guide to video production. Originally funded primarily through
loans, the MEF today is supported by its video sales as well as private
donations and grants from the Ms. Foundation and the Massachusetts Foundation
for the Humanities, among others.74 r Center for
Media Education (www.cme.org). The Center for Media Education (CME)
was founded in 1991 by Kathryn Montgomery. Its main activity is generating
research and informational materials on "the potential - and the
peril - for children and youth of the rapidly evolving digital media age."
For example, in a 1997 study called "Alcohol and Tobacco on the Web:
New Threats to Youth," CME researchers looked at the strategies that
alcohol and tobacco-promoting Web sites use to appeal to youth. It reported
that one site featured "an off-the-road wild ride with a red 'cyber-rodent'
who zooms through a desert littered with tequila bottles and other Cuervo
merchandising icons"; another site presented interviews with rock
stars alongside "a steady stream of promotions" for beer. CME propounds a reductive view of violent media content as having uniformly
adverse effects, and it is not an integral part of the media literacy
movement. Its recommendations center more on regulation than on analyzing
media critically. Although the alcohol and tobacco report does advise
that "parents and educators... help educate our nation's youth about
these new dangers," it also suggests that the Federal Trade Commission
investigate "unfair and deceptive advertising"; that the Food
and Drug Administration "carefully monitor online tobacco promotion
... and develop any additional safeguards needed to protect youth";
and that cigarette companies "refrain from moving onto the Internet
to market and promote their products."75 r Citizens
for Media Literacy (www.main.nc.us/cml). Founded in 1991 by former
University of North Carolina-Asheville journalist and now-executive director
Wally Bowen, Citizens for Media Literacy (CML) advocates media literacy
as a tool to produce engaged citizens who will actively question corporate
power and consumer culture. One of its early projects was the irreverent
Get a Life! comic book, which followed a teenager through a behind-the-scenes
television tour. The comic is available on CML's Web site and in 2002
satirized Channel One along with other commercial media products aimed
at youth. In addition to conducting local workshops for media literacy teachers,
CML promotes free expression and access to information, advising journalists
and activists, for instance, on freedom of information and open records
laws and presenting lectures on such topics as "Distortion, Distraction,
and Democracy" and "What Citizens Need to Know About the First
Amendment." CML also maintains the Mountain Area Information Network,
which provides free Internet access to the mountain communities of Western
North Carolina. It has received funding from (among others) the nonprofit
corporation Public Interest North Carolina, the private Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation, and the North Carolina Humanities Council. Bowen has criticized the media literacy movement for being a "rather
insular and self-referential coterie of media educators" that excludes
a broader range of scholars, teachers, public health advocates, librarians,
journalists, parents, and other citizens who are interested in challenging
the mass media system. He calls most U.S. media literacy initiatives too
"scaled-down" and "politically palatable," which he
attributes to reluctance to critique the media industry too sharply. "We
are not immune," he wrote in CML's former newsletter, The New
Citizen, "to the peer pressure of our well-heeled colleagues
in the media industry. Indeed, some U.S. media educators see the media
industry as a primary source of funding."76 r Project Look
Sharp (www.ithaca.edu/looksharp). Project Look Sharp, based at Ithaca
College's Center for Research on the Effects of Television, focuses on
providing staff development resources - workshops, for example, on specific
issues like body image and the credibility of information on the Web.
Look Sharp also organizes intensive summer courses and mini-courses, in
which participating educators draft their own lessons incorporating media
literacy instruction. The organization has published a pamphlet outlining "12 Principles"
for integrating media education in existing curricula. It explains Look
Sharp's philosophy of "weaving media literacy into the curriculum
whenever and wherever possible throughout the school year," in all
grade levels, instead of introducing it as a discrete subject. The goal
is both to render it more effective and to ease the burden on educators,
"who are already overwhelmed with the demands of a full curriculum."77 r Media Literacy
Review formerly the Media Literacy Online Project (interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/mlr/home).
Based at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education at the University
of Oregon, Eugene, and directed by Gary Ferrington, the Media Literacy
Review aims "to make available to educators, producers, students,
and parents information and resources related to the influence of media
in the lives of children, youth, and adults." The Review operates
a Web site that is the key source of online resources on media literacy.
The site has links to media literacy organizations, lesson plans, training
programs, and events worldwide. It houses an extensive archive of articles
from other Web sites, ranging from "An Introduction to Media Literacy"
by David Considine to "How Seventeen Undermines Young Women"
from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Twice a year, the Review compiles
a collection of online articles devoted to a different theme: the fall/winter
2001 issue, for example, focused on non-fiction film, and the site linked
to historical overviews of documentary film, teaching resources, and sample
syllabi, as well as online guides to filmmaking and Web sites for film
institutes and festivals.78 r New Mexico
Media Literacy Project (www.nmmlp. org). The New Mexico Media Literacy
Project (NMMLP) was established in the early 1990s by the Downs Media
Education Corporation and was soon taken over by the Albuquerque Academy,
a private school, with funding from the McCune Foundation, state agencies,
and other public and private sources.79 In contrast
to Renee Hobbs' Media Literacy Project and other groups, the NMMLP says
it "believes that media literacy requires independence from media
corporations, so we do not take money from the global media giants who
are restricting information, redefining freedom, limiting our democracy
and presenting so many negative educational choices to our children and
citizens." Indeed, the Project believes that the major global media
corporations "have become the world's biggest censors, controlling
the content of information that reaches the average person."80
It relies on support from public and nonprofit entities, supplemented
by director Bob McCannon's honoraria from speaking engagements and the
like, which he donates to the organization.81 Since 1993, the Project has generated curricula, held hundreds of workshops,
training sessions, and presentations for public schools, parents, and
community organizations, and conducted extensive research into the efficacy
of its various efforts. It focuses largely on the pernicious effects of
advertising in seducing young viewers to consume junk food, alcohol, tobacco,
and other unhealthy products.82 Consistent with its grassroots philosophy, the NMMLP traveled to 70 schools
statewide in the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 school years as part of its Tobacco
Use Prevention and Control Program (TUPAC), at each school delivering
a 90-minute presentation on the techniques tobacco advertisers use to
attract young customers. A survey conducted at 14 of the schools afterward
found that 73% of nonsmokers were less likely to start smoking, and over
half of the smokers tried to quit.83 In 2002, McCannon
wrote: "we are in the 6th TUPAC grant,
and every year the numbers get better as we get better at doing ML/ME
for prevention."84 In 1999-2000, NMMLP also gave presentations on media promotion of alcohol;
as part of the project, students produced counter-advertisements that
eventually aired on cable channels that appeal to youth (MTV, TNT, USA,
Nickelodeon, and the Discovery Channel). Also in 1999-2000, the Project
initiated "Media 2000" at six New Mexico public schools; it
combined age-specific lesson plans with a CD-ROM, Media Literacy: Reversing
Addiction in Our Compulsive Culture, and covered five areas: violence,
nutrition, relationships, body image, and alcohol, tobacco, and drug use. Beginning in 1999, NMMLP also implemented a media literacy-based substance
abuse prevention curriculum at six middle schools, reaching more than
1,300 students. The program included a six-day unit designed to fulfill
the State of New Mexico's media literacy standards. In addition to Reversing
Addiction, schools received Understanding Media, a CD-ROM with
400 pages of text, visual resources and sample questions such as "Does
smoking help you lose weight?" or (in response to ads in which slim,
attractive women smoke cigarettes), "Are these ads telling the truth
about smoking to women?" Two sample covers of Teen magazine
featuring loud, splashy text and fresh-faced models are accompanied by
the questions, "What's the 'formula' behind the production of these
covers?" and "Is it a coincidence both these covers are so similar?"
The program also involved training sessions for teachers and parents.
Follow-up evaluation indicated a decrease in positive attitudes toward
alcohol and tobacco as compared to pretest figures.85 In fiscal year 2001, NMMLP gave hundreds of presentations or workshops
to more than 51,000 people; 77 of the events were outside New Mexico.
"We are producing a revolution in media awareness," the Project's
Web site said. "Our goal is to make New Mexico the most media literate
state in the U.S."86 r Just Think
Foundation (www.justthink.org). The San Francisco-based Just Think
Foundation was founded in 1995 by education activist Elana Yonah Rosen
and interactive designer Aaron Singer as a response to media violence
and, in particular, the growing tendency of child advocacy groups to promote
censorship rather than education to combat it. Just Think combines grassroots
outreach, especially to teenagers, with curricular and staff development. In 1998, the foundation published Changing the World Through Media
Education: A New Media Education Curriculum, targeted to teachers
of grades 4-8 and containing lesson plans, guidelines for activities,
classroom materials, and ideas for hands-on media projects. The book has
eight units, beginning with general overviews ("What Is This Thing
Called Media?"), and progressing to thematically organized chapters
on "community, society, and democracy"; "the power of images"
(covering such topics as ideals of beauty); "behavior and consequences"
(addressing media violence as well as "inappropriate language");
"health issues" (examining drug, alcohol, and tobacco messages);
and "real people" (examining attitudes toward celebrity, heroism,
and leadership). Another of the foundation's curricular projects concentrates on media
stereotypes and role models. Titled Developing Minds, the 10-week
curriculum is aimed at 4th-12th
graders and includes a comic-style book for students, supplementary class
materials on CD-ROM, and manuals for educators and parents. Projects like
this are directed in large part toward minority and lower- income youth
who, the organization believes, are most susceptible to the influence
of undesirable media role models. Accordingly, Just Think has refurbished
a retired school bus and outfitted it with high-tech electronic equipment
(including a video production facility and computers with Internet connections).
Staff members travel in this "Just Think Mobile" to schools
and after-school sites in lower-income communities and conduct Developing
Minds sessions as well as lessons from Just Think's "Body Image
Project." Though the Foundation's trained instructors often deliver the program
themselves, its Professional Development Program also trains teachers
to incorporate media literacy into a variety of class subjects and familiarizes
them with the Developing Minds course. Funders include United Way
of the Bay Area, the Sundance Institute, and a long list of other backers,
many of them corporate. Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe provide funds and
products (the Just Think Mobile's iMacs feature Microsoft and Adobe software),
while companies ranging from Air France to Disney and Skyy Vodka have
provided donations in-kind.87 r Media Education
Lab at Temple University (www.renee hobbs.org). In 1996, Renee Hobbs
founded the Media Literacy Project, which published curricular materials
and research studies, organized teacher training programs, and provided
consultancy services. During the previous four years, Hobbs had been a
consultant to the Billerica, Massachusetts, school district, developing
media literacy programs in part to defuse criticisms of the district's
use of Channel One. In 2003, Hobbs moved from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts
to Temple University in Philadelphia, where she now heads up Temple's
Media Education Lab. The Lab's Web site features Hobbs's basic curriculum,
Media Literacy, as well as current research projects on adolescent
girls and body image, critical thinking skills about advertising, and
the rise of media education in Italy.88 r Center for
Media Studies (www.mediastudies.rutgers.edu). The Center for Media
Studies at Rutgers University, directed by Robert Kubey, is mainly designed
to foster dialogue among researchers, scholars, media professionals, educators,
parents and others with a stake in media education, and to establish a
network that allows them to build effective media literacy programs. It
seeks to "initiate and support intellectual partnerships across departments
and academic units" and "address issues of public concern regarding
media performance" (for example, the relationship between media and
cultural diversity, or between media and health). The Center organizes training sessions, conferences, workshops, and seminars;
through the Office of University Relations, it also conducts press conferences
and TV and radio broadcasts. Its New Jersey Media Literacy Project is
designed to implement the state's "Core Curricular Content Standards"
by helping students "access, evaluate, analyze, and produce both
electronic and print media." In 2000, a bill introduced in the New
Jersey legislature proposed to allocate $1,040,000 for the Center and
the New Jersey Department of Education to develop teacher training programs;
it was amended, however, to allocate only $530,000 and add provisions
concerning local school districts' own efforts to find funding for media
literacy. A $1.5 billion budget shortfall in 2001-02 sank hopes for the
bill's passage.89 r Media Literacy
Clearinghouse (http://www.med.sc.edu: 1081). The Media Literacy Clearinghouse
in South Carolina is maintained by Frank Baker, coordinator of distance
education and K-12 school services for the South Carolina Educational
Television Commission, chair of the 1999 National Media Education Conference,
and co-author, with Robert Kubey, of the comprehensive 1999 survey of
state media literacy standards. Launched in 1998 with funding from the
state legislature, the Clearinghouse is a program of the Office of Alcohol
and Drug Studies at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.
Its explicit purpose is to use media literacy to reduce adolescents' health
risks. The Web site contains articles and lesson plans.90
r Media Channel
(www.mediachannel.org). Media Channel, a division of the alternative news
service Globalvision, is a nonprofit public interest "supersite"
dedicated to a range of media issues, including the suppression of information
by media conglomerates. Its Web pages on media literacy focus on corporate
ownership and monopolization, development of alternative sources of information,
and the importance of media literacy in a world increasingly dominated
by global technology. r Alliance
for a Media Literate America (www. amlainfo.org). The Alliance for
a Media Literate America (AMLA) was created at the 2001 National Media
Education Conference to enhance nationwide collaboration and "advocate
for media literacy in ways that are more powerful and influential than
any individual, project, or institution can achieve alone." The founding
declaration added: "Medical, social service, and justice system professionals
have identified media literacy as a vital tool in the promotion of public
health, prevention, and wellness." AMLA's Web site emphasizes the
importance of "critical inquiry" and "skill-building"
rather than "media-bashing and blame," and states its desire
to be "a key force" in bringing media literacy education to
all American youth. AMLA's belief that effective media education requires broad support is
reflected in its funding sources. Its founding sponsors included both
the nonprofit educational television company Sesame Workshop and the corporate
media entities AOL Time Warner and Discovery Channel. The backers of its
founding conference included the New York Times Foundation, the educational
publishing house Holt, Rinehart and Winston, the Fox Family Channel, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Media Education Foundation, and the
College of Communication at the University of Texas. As AMLA notes on
its Web site: "We believe that corporations, especially media corporations,
have a social responsibility to support media literacy. If we deny them
the opportunity to do so and then criticize them for not doing so, we
create a no win situation, both for them and for the potential beneficiaries
of their efforts."91 At its founding conference, AMLA decided to organize biannual national
conferences, institute a referral service to connect media literacy specialists
with schools and communities that want media education training for their
teachers, begin publication of a national journal, and award an annual
prize to recognize achievement in the implementation of media literacy
programs. It has since formed various subcommittees, chaired by prominent
media literacy advocates such as Frank Baker, David Considine, Elana Yonah
Rosen, and Cyndy Scheibe. AMLA members have also formed caucuses around
the country, some based on geographical regions; others to discuss specific
subjects like "Commercialism in Schools" and "Media, Sexuality,
and Gender Relations."92 r Action Coalition
for Media Education (www. acmecoalition.org) The Action Coalition
for Media Education (ACME) is, as of 2003, the newest media literacy organization.
In part a reaction to the AMLA founding conference in 2001 (the fifth
national meeting organized by essentially the same group of media literacy
leaders), ACME's explicit purpose is to use media education to "deal
with corporate censorship, racism, commercialism in the schools, news
monopolies and the misrepresentation of women and minorities." As
The Nation magazine wrote of ACME in January 2002, "leading
media scholars and educators are forming a new progressive media literacy
organization, one that will remain independent of media conglomerates
that bankroll existing groups."93 Since its founding conference in October 2002, ACME has participated
in a number of grassroots campaigns, including the massive national effort
to urge the Federal Communications Commission not to eliminate its limitations
on media ownership. It has also established an evaluation system for media
literacy curricula and resources (books, films, multimedia tools, Web
sites) and plans to endorse those that meet its standards on its Web site.
Its monthly e-bulletin, BACME, features articles, links, and information
about media literacy projects and political reform efforts. Its three-prong
mission statement includes: "teaching media literacy skills to children
and adults so they can become more critical media consumers and active
citizens; championing a wide array of independent media voices; and democratizing
our media system through political reform efforts." ACME's sponsors range from the American Academy of Pediatrics to Project Censored and the New Mexico Media Literacy Project. State Initiatives In 1999, Frank Baker and Robert Kubey's survey of state curriculum frameworks
reported that at least some media literacy concepts were included in the
standards of 48 states; by 2002, they had increased the count to all 50
states. The breadth and content of these standards vary enormously, from
California and North Carolina's extensive and detailed media literacy
requirements to Kansas' single reference, in its social studies standard,
to "explaining the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War from a variety
of perspectives," including "media subculture." 94
In New Mexico, Bob McCannon's New Mexico Media Literacy Project has collaborated
with the state on a comprehensive K-12 media literacy curriculum. Similarly,
Wisconsin's comprehensive curriculum was influenced by David Considine's
interdisciplinary approach and his philosophy of engaging students in
"constructing meaning rather than passively accepting it."95
Following are descriptions of four quite different state media literacy
initiatives. r Massachusetts.
Massachusetts' experiments in media literacy began with the Billerica/
Channel One controversy of 1992, and conflicts continued to beset media
literacy education in the state. Renee Hobbs reports that when in 1995
a group of educators, scholars, artists and activists calling themselves
the Massachusetts Coalition for Media Literacy convened for a series of
meetings at public television station WGBH, "the conflicts generated
by diverse goals, motives and instructional practices became apparent."
Despite the conflicts, the Massachusetts Department of Education incorporated
media literacy into its language arts, social studies, and health curricula.
A "media strand" has been part of the English language arts
framework since its introduction in 1994. Early versions of the standard,
which is divided into "media analysis" and "media production"
segments, "had almost a kind of suspicion of the media, and we've
worked very hard to get rid of that," according to Susan Wheltle,
who coordinates the state's English, arts, foreign language, and history
and social science frameworks.97 Massachusetts' 2001 media literacy standards aim to highlight the difference
between mass media and more traditional objects of study rather than demonizing
one in favor of the other; they begin with an acknowledgment that "while
the written text rightly remains the central focus of the English language
arts classroom, the study of works in other media affords teachers opportunities
to teach about the distinctive characteristics of each medium and the
dynamics of adaptation from one medium to another."98
Thus, "learning Strand 26" in language arts requires students
to "identify, analyze, and supply knowledge of the conventions, elements,
and techniques of film, radio, video, television, multimedia productions,
the Internet, and emerging technologies." The "Health/Prevention"
curriculum requires evaluation of commercials, including, for example,
the credibility of ads for quick weight loss programs and low-fat foods.99 While media literacy is thus an integral part of the state's curriculum
standards, local school boards are largely responsible for figuring out
how to incorporate it. The school district of Burlington, for example,
has drafted its own "K-12 Media Literacy Expectations for Student
Learning," designed to comply with the state standards.100
One district attorney, Kevin Burke of Essex County, has also adopted a
media literacy program, aimed at juvenile offenders and designed to help
them "deconstruct harmful media messages" and "make healthier
decisions in their own lives, particularly in the areas of violence, drug
use and prejudice." The program, called Flash Point: Life Skills
through the Lens of Media Literacy, was pilot-tested among youth on
probation, in juvenile diversion programs, and in custody. More than 200
juvenile justice and prevention coordinators across the state have been
trained to teach the curriculum.101 r Hawaii.
Hawaii represents an early attempt to mandate media literacy at the legislative
level. As Kathleen Tyner has pointed out, media literacy is an issue of
some urgency in Hawaii, given its potential to combat ethnic stereotypes
prevalent in the mass media and, in turn, to teach students to create
their own media products that convey more balanced portrayals of the state.102
Media literacy, with its goal of creating a more empowered citizenry,
strikes a particularly resonant chord in a state that has grappled with
issues of its own sovereignty. In 1994, Hawaii state legislator Jackie Young introduced a bill calling
for the Legislative Reference Bureau to conduct "a study on an appropriate
media literacy education program in the State of Hawaii." Citing
"organizations such as the National Telemedia Council, Strategies
for Media Literacy and the Center for Media and Values [that] have strived
to work together to inform the public of the importance of media literacy"
and the example of Ontario, Canada's state-mandated program, the bill
could have been a first step toward a comprehensive media literacy initiative
for the youth and eventually the adult population of Hawaii. The bill
did not pass, however.103 Since then, the state has sponsored smaller-scale media literacy programs
such as the Cultural and Visual Literacy Project, a collaboration between
the Hawaii International Film Festival and the State Department of Education.
The project conducts workshops for teachers and provides them with lesson
plans and, in some cases, classroom materials that help them frame discussions
about films that the students have viewed at festival screenings.104
Meanwhile, the state's language arts, social studies, health, and educational
technology curriculum strands all incorporate media literacy concepts.
In its standard for teaching "Technology as A Tool For Research Grades
4-5," for example, Hawaii requires students to identify "the
source of information and the point of view presented for analysis of
any bias," including "whether material retrieved over the Internet
is fact or opinion."105 r California.
According to Kubey and Baker's 1999 study, California possesses one of
the nation's most comprehensive set of requirements. In grade 4 language
arts, students learn to "evaluate the role of media in focusing attention
on events and in forming opinions on issues." By grades 11-12, the
curriculum must cover the "strategies used by media to inform, persuade,
entertain, and transmit culture," including "perpetuation of
stereotypes." Secondary school social studies curricula must address
inaccuracies and biases in political advertising, radio, and film. Health
courses require student essays evaluating family dynamics in a selected
TV program, collages showing how advertisements convey messages about
body image, and classroom discussions on "influences and pressures
to become sexually active."106 In addition to California's curriculum requirements, two programs funded
by the U.S. Department of Education's 2000 Media Literacy Initiative operated
outside public school classrooms. In 2001, "Work of the Mind: Media
Literacy for Kids and Teens" in the West Contra Costa County School
District targeted "at-risk" elementary-school students, many
of them expelled from mainstream schools for bad behavior, while "Inter:
Re-Active: Youth, Gaming and the American Social Imaginary" at Belmont
Senior High School in Los Angeles collaborated with a local nonprofit
and a digital-arts studio to bring youth and artists together on creative
projects to combat violence in urban, low-income, primarily immigrant
neighborhoods. Participating youngsters in this "Inter: Re-Active"
program discuss media violence and design alternative fantasy games which,
with support from two private foundations and a venture capital consultant,
will be commercially marketed, thus providing the students with "a
financial reward for their creative product and public recognition of
their investment in an important contemporary social issue." The
work, in turn, will become part of the students' portfolios and increase
their chances of college admission and scholarships.107
r Maryland.
Maryland was the first state to create a comprehensive media literacy
curriculum to be incorporated in a variety of classroom subjects (language
arts, social studies, math, and health) in public schools throughout the
state, although it has not been officially mandated. In the wake of the
1999 shooting at Colorado's Columbine High School, the state embarked
on a public-private partnership with the Discovery Channel and commissioned
Renee Hobbs to draw up separate curricula, keyed into Maryland's state
content standards, for elementary, middle, and high school students. The
result, collectively titled Assignment: Media Literacy, was published
in 2000 and comprised 18 instructional units, each accompanied by video
clips. In addition to covering the basics of critical media viewing, the elementary
school course considers such subjects as "heroes and villains"
and, like the other two curricula, contains production assignments such
as making videos and public service announcements. One activity in middle
school calls on students to "invent a non-violent game or sport for
the 21st century" to go along with a
unit on violence in entertainment. The high school curriculum builds more
explicitly on students' familiarity with sophisticated social studies
and language arts concepts, with units devoted to "crime reporting,"
"the culture of celebrity," and one - covering "history,
literature, and the mass media" - that requires students to "reflect
on the connections between journalism, history, and literature by exploring
colonialism in Africa in the 19th and 20th
centuries."108 Maryland has directed much of its effort to teacher training. Once the curriculum was prepared, the department contacted all school superintendents in the state and began holding regional training sessions for |