From the
broadsheets and banned theater of America’s founding era to TV news, Twitter,
and sitcoms today, media have been our professors, teaching us about our world
and shaping how we think about and respond to important issues. Mass media are
more directly educative for most adults than any type of formal schooling.
Increasingly, as the current mania for standardized testing narrows the school
curriculum, media also are surpassing classroom teachers as our children’s most
influential educators.
This media-education
interconnection is complex and often problematic. While media have helped to
shape progress on some issues of importance to American democracy, they also
have contributed to ignorance and misunderstanding. The First Amendment protects
freedom of expression, but it does not ensure truth. Societally reflective
sitcoms, for example, have paved the way for progress on social issues, from
civil rights to marriage equality. But biased political advertising and
propagandistic “news” have contributed to political stagnation and the growing
gap between rich and poor.
Media are
seductive. We spend hours on “screen time.” Those who control the media well
understand that what is portrayed and how it is framed shapes socially shared
knowledge. The rise of corporate oligarchy in the United States has been
achieved, in part, through concerted propaganda passed off as truth. What this
means is that, if we are to reclaim American democracy, greater attention needs
to be paid to the educative power of media—and not merely to the traditional
forms (movies, radio, television) but to new media that we carry with us in our
mobile phones and tablet computers. According to a Pew study last year, one in
three Americans gets news through Facebook.** And two-thirds of adult Americans
use Facebook.
For media
consumers—which means everyone, children and adults—it has never been more
important to exercise effective credibility strategies, such as critically
examining claims of “truth.” A quote attributed to American economist Thomas
Sowell is apt: “If people in the media cannot
decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing
propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that
difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.” However, such
understanding must be taught, not just in schools but through the media
themselves.
Principles
of journalism must cross all platforms, from sitcoms to news reports. Are
“facts” accurate, credible, verifiable, contextually appropriate, and unbiased?
Whether the purveyor is a talking head or a comic character, how is “truth”
situated? If we subscribe to the biblical admonition that the “truth will set
you free,” then we also must invoke the first part of that quotation about “knowing
the truth,” which is the real challenge, regardless of the context.
*This essay is
cross-posted on two blogs: Advancing Learning and Democracy
(http://advancinglearning.blogspot.com) and Arts in View
(http://artsinview.blogspot.com).
