Window of Opportunity

For my very first post I thought that I would share something I wrote a few weeks back right after the war ended between Israel and Lebanon.

Historians and other students of conflict have long said that the key to changing the course of future discourse is dependant on how different societies educate their children. This is not a new concept. Much has already been written about the textbooks from which Palestinian and children from other Arab nations learn about what their leaders have deemed “history.”

But it is not just proper classic textbook education that these children should learn. Educators need to also move beyond that to include the important lessons of media awareness and literacy. Such education extends to children not just in the Middle East, but America and other countries as well.

We already examined and critiqued coverage of the recent war between Israel and Lebanon on a daily basis. Now the time has come to enact change. We need to teach our public, starting with the children, how to understand and when necessary, talk back to the media outlets, or if they choose, to become involved themselves as they grow older.

Media education is something that we all need to be taught. One of the lessons this current war has hammered home is that very concept. Day after day we read reviews of media coverage, analysis including discussion of bias, photo doctoring and much more. But did the readers and viewers really know how to understand and decipher this onslaught of information?

Even addressing some basic questions can provide a window into how the media functions and chooses its news stories. During this current conflict, the issue of the media’s responsibility to its public has been raised and debated. This is a subject that should not only be discussed during war time, but all the time.

Once upon a time, the American media viewed itself as providing a public service. In his 2005 book Bad News, former CBS journalist Tom Fenton said that time was not even that long ago. According to Fenton, since the 1980’s there has been a steady decline in America’s coverage in foreign news stories (except in times of crisis like the current war when reporters are often “parachuted” in to fill the ranks and cover, albeit temporarily, a breaking story); a rise of talk radio and television shows (which while interesting and entertaining, are not really news) and a general sense that the American public is under-informed.

In my own media education classes I refer to it as the “dumbing down” of the media consumer. I also fully support Tom Fenton’s call to arms. The public must get involved and make demands of what it expects from their sources of information.

But again, to do this, the public needs to be taught more about how the media works. Including who owns and supports the various news outlets, deregulation of broadcasting, ratings and even technical understanding of editing and satellite transmissions.

Teaching this kind of information to our youth does not have to be tedious or confusing. There are simple and understandable methods including using basic comparisons of news headlines in print and on television and radio. Lessons can be fun and include information on interviewing, live versus taped reporting and even role playing of how to create a balanced news story. Students are already taught how to create balanced research projects in their formative academic years. The media education concept is more or less the same.

Media education, literacy and awareness is taught all over the world, but not yet required in the majority of American public school curriculums. Canada has one of the most sophisticated media awareness infrastructures around.

If you google the words “media education,” nearly two million links will be listed. What is interesting is that while many of these links originate in the U.S., America still lags behind much of the world in educating their children as to how the media actually works. The good news is that there are some wonderful media advocacy groups in the U.S. who provide fabulous resources for teachers to experiment with in their classes. That is, if their already pre-structured curriculum allows for such creativity.

In their 2002 report, Thinking Critically About Media: Schools and Families in Partnership, the Washington D.C. based organization, Cable in the Classroom suggests that “although school systems throughout the United States are mandated to teach critical thinking, if the schools are not linking this skill to the media world in which so many students are spending upward of six hours a day, they are leaving a potential gold mine unexplored.”

How can we expect the American public to understand how to analyze news events, and in this case more specifically, the war between Israel and Lebanon, if they are not given the opportunities to learn how to critique their media?

It isn’t enough for us to search for and be satisfied with the occasional news story that presents a balanced view of a conflict. We shouldn’t have to constantly compare and pit one news network against the others. Media outlets in America and around the world have a huge responsibility to function as a service industry. If they don’t perform as we want them to, or need them to, it is also our responsibility to know enough about who they are and what they do so that we can make informed and accurate demands.