The media decides the message

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The media decides the message

• Whos watching, whos listening and what are they
  saying?

Please be advised that no primates were harmed in
the making of this graphic.
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Association of Media Literacy says

• Mass Media Mass media refers to those media that
  are designed to be consumed by large audiences
  through the agencies of technology.
• Media Education Traditionally, it's the process
  by which one learns the technical production
  skills associated with creating media texts. More
  recently, it has also included the intellectual
  processes of critical consumption or
  deconstruction of texts.
• Media Literacy The process of understanding and
  using the mass media in an assertive and
  non-passive way. This includes an informed and
  critical understanding of the nature of the
  media, the techniques used by them and the impact
  of these techniques.

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Why media education/literacy?

• Our job is to give people not what they want,
  but what we decide they ought to have. Richard
  Salant, former president of CBS News

Thats why.
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Selbys Spatial Dimension

• The impact of mass media is both local and
  global. The media enters a single home anywhere
  in the world through newspaper, television or
  computer and makes a daily impact. Even those
  without direct access to mass media in their home
  are impacted by the messages it sends to others.
  It shapes how many of our opinions are formed.
  That in turn impacts how we deal with others
  cultures and societies within our own community,
  our country and our planet.

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Selbys Issues Dimension

• The issues surrounding mass media are, well,
  massive. If it is important for individuals to
  learn about global issues and that information
  comes to us from the mass media, poor information
  can lead to poor understanding of those issues.
  Think of what it was like to be Muslim in the
  U.S. after 9/11.
• If our current problems are the result of
  previous problems and could then lead to future
  problems, misinformation or disinformation can be
  very damaging in the long term.

• Finally, if we are expected to see our own
  perspective as one of many and if we are to be
  considerate of other perspectives, the mass media
  plays a role as the objective lens through
  which we look to gain an understanding of other
  perspectives. Again, if this presentation is
  biased or slanted in any way, we are not properly
  informed and thus possibly inconsiderate of
  others as a result.

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Selbys Temporal Dimension

• According to Pike and Selby, ...our reality
  grows out of past history but it is powerfully
  shaped too by what we believe about the future.
  (Global Teacher, Global Learner)
• If our information on past, present or future is
  coming from a tainted source it could affect the
  decisions we make about our future in a way that
  is both harmful to ourselves and others. Think of
  U.S. policy in Iraq as an example.

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Selbys Inner Dimension

• To paraphrase JFK, this dimension is about what
  you can do for the world, not what the world can
  do for you. It is about how we see ourselves and
  how we view the world we live in. The theme of
  this is social responsibility. The alternative
  media has sprouted, particularly on-line, as a
  result of this looking inward and looking
  outward process.

• The alternative media is about providing
  something the mainstream does not, because the
  perception is there that we are being told what
  they think we need to know.
• If people begin to self-examine and think
  critically about the information they receive
  from the media, questions will be raised and the
  next step is to look for answers. Sometimes,
  those answers can be found in the alternative
  media.

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• You can easily make the argument that without
  mass media, the world would be a much different
  place. For example, while conflict has always
  been part of mankinds history, the motivations
  were much simpler before you could turn on the TV
  or click on the Internet and find information
  spun to promote or attack any viewpoint 9/11
  taught us that.

Try picturing the coverage of the Crusades on
CNN. Now that would have been a geopolitical
debate. Next up on Crossfire is Pope Urban II a
terrorist or a holy warrior?
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Media can be good and bad

• On the positive side, world-wide assistance in
  crisis areas has been generated more quickly
  (think Live Aid) by using the mass media to show
  how desperate things are in the developing world.
• On the flip side, many regions such as Darfur and
  Rwanda have been ignored by the mainstream media
  and allowed to dip into chaos, gaining coverage
  only when things explode.

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• The mass media allows us to tap into the global
  community like never before. The Internet in
  particular allows private citizens access to
  almost every corner of the globe 24 hours a day.
  This can give a person in Nova Scotia an
  awareness of events in areas such as East Timor,
  Somalia or Iran they may not be getting on their
  local newscast or in their daily newspaper.

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Knowledge is Power

• The value of this blossoming electronic world is
  that used correctly, it can motivate and inform
  people on global issues they may have known
  nothing about.
• Stories about political or social happenings in
  developing nations that are hidden on the back
  pages of their local newspaper can be studied and
  accessed easily on a home or school computer.

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• High school courses such as Global History and
  Global Geography offer students a first-hand look
  at what goes on outside their borders and how it
  can impact their lives and possibly what they can
  do to help.
• The use of software programs such as Real Lives
  and ArcView allow students direct access to
  accurate information about countries they
  previously knew nothing about.

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So everythings good, right?
Not quite.
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• If your child/student watches network television,
  has access to the Web, plays video games or reads
  a newspaper, they should be media literate. For
  example, to send a child blindly into cyberspace
  is asking for trouble. Misinformation and
  disinformation litter the Internet and makes
  media education even more necessary to sift fact
  from fiction.

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• In 2004, the average Canadian child watched 13.5
  hours of TV per week. That was down from 17 hours
  a week in 2000.
• Why? Internet use went from 50 of Canadian
  households to 82 during that same time frame.
  Kids are online more and playing more video games.

Notice the happy kid is the one WITHOUT a game
controller in his hand. Soon, he too will be
assimilated!
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Microsoft has sold more than 18 million units of
its xBox 360 which came on the market in May 2005.
Sony has sold 11 million units of its PlayStation
3 game console since it came on the market in
November 2006.
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According to StatsCan, the biggest hit to
television viewing for kids aged 12-18 is news
programming. Only 9.5 of Canadian teens watch
any kind of news programming. Why? Where are they
getting their information from?
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Good question. Where are any of us getting our
information from these days? The following
statistics show a break down of where we get our
information, who owns the information, how much
we trust it and how it is changing over time.
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Top 20 web sites
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Top 20 cable channels
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Top 20 newspapers
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Media That People Turn to For Political News
2006
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Believability of Local TV News
2002 - 2006
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Believability of Network News Outlets
Believe all or most of what organization says
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Believability of Various Print Outlets
Percent of people who say they believe most or all of what each outlet reports.
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Online AudiencePercent of Internet Users Who
Access News Online
Percent accessing news online ever or yesterday, 2000 to 2006
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Top Online News Sites (Nielsen)
January through December 2006
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Blog Readership, 2004-2006
Percent of adult internet users
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Why the retreat from hard news?
23 of Americans aged 18-29 identified ABC, NBC
and CBS as sources of information on the U.S.
presidential elections in 2004
21 identified The Daily Show (left) and
Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update (above) as
similar sources of information about the election.
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How alarming is this?

• A study published by Indiana University in 2006
  showed that when it comes to substance, there
  is little difference between The Daily Show and
  other (network or cable) news outlets.
• According to the Pew Research Center, 54 of
  viewers of The Daily Show scored in the high
  knowledge range, compared to 31 of network news
  viewers (April 2007).

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Average nightly viewers

• The OReilly Factor (FOX) - 2,708,000
• The Daily Show (Comedy Central) 1,400,000
• ABC World News Tonight 1,360,000
• NBC Nightly News 1,300,000
• The Colbert Report (Comedy Central) 1,250,000
• The National (CBC) 1,190,000
• CNN Election Center - 1,123,000
• Countdown (MSNBC) - 1,025,000
• CBS Evening News 1,000,000
• Global National 927,000
• CTV Evening News 882,000

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Corporate media ownership

• http//www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html

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Media ownership revenue
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Canadian newspaper ownership

• There are 100 daily newspapers in Canada, 61 of
  which are owned by three companies
• Sun Media (37)
• Canwest (13)
• Transcontinental (11)

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So what happened? Where did it all go wrong? When
did news programming and entertainment blend
together to become infotainment? When TV
replaced radio as the preferred family medium for
news, it wasnt glamorous it was gritty. But
even then they saw it coming.
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Edward R. Murrow

• on the future impact of television

I couldnt find an audio clip of this speech, but
it was given word for word in the movie Good
Night, and Good Luck starring David Strathairn
awesome flick about the early days of network TV
news.
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Media historians call the assassination of U.S.
President John F. Kennedy the birth of network
news. In the infancy of television it was the
event that brought the entire world to the TV to
find out what was going on. In later years,
Vietnam, the Moon landing, the Reagan
assassination attempt, the War in Iraq and 9/11
did the same.
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But something has changed. It used to be that men
like Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley,
Harry Reasoner, John Chancellor, David Brinkley,
and Canadas own Peter Jennings were the people
you could trust on the air each night. They often
didnt just report the news, they made it.
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Walter Cronkite

• Editorial on the Tet offensive in 1968

• Reflecting on his editorial almost 40 years later

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• On January 28, 1986, CNN was the only news
  station to carry the launch and subsequent
  explosion of the Challenger shuttle LIVE.

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CNN now the Celebrity News Network?

• It is made clear to the people hired to produce
  CNNs primetime shows that their jobs depend on
  their ability to deliver respectable ratings, and
  hopefully boost them. former CNN Bureau Chief
  Rebecca MacKinnon

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Pretenders to the throne?
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So whats the bottom line?

• The bottom line is there is no truth greater than
  the old adage dont believe everything you
  read. Just add in hear, download, text, watch,
  etc. In order to get a true picture of the world
  we have to access mass media. When doing so we
  must ask ourselves some very basic questions
• Who is the message intended for?
• Who wants to reach this audience and why?
• From whose perspective is this story being told?
• Whose voices are heard and whose are absent?
• What strategies does the message use to get my
  attention and make me feel included?

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Some alternative media sites

• www.thenation.com
• www.freepress.net
• www.media-awareness.ca
• www.indymedia.org
• www.fair.org
• www.planetfriendly.net
• www.medialens.org
• www.zcommunications.org
• www.mediachannel.org
• www.independentmedia.ca
• www.globalresearch.ca

• www.straightgoods.com
• www.rabble.ca
• www.counterpunch.org
• www.guardian.co.uk
• www.policyalternatives.ca
• www.cbc.ca
• www.alternet.org
• www.disinfo.com
• www.guerillanews.com
• www.adbusters.org
• www.greenpeace.org

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A last laugh