Page 106 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Ch ldren and Effects: From Sesame Street to Columb ne |

elsewhere (the family or school) for causes. Fourth, would-be censors speaking
in the name of children often really want to clean up everybody’s media. Such
censors, in effect, end up treating all media consumers as if they are children.
Fifth, attacks on children’s media, whether undertaken by activists, politicians,
or social scientists, have tended to decontextualize media, especially media with
violent content. “Violence” is rarely understood as one narrative component
among others, or seen has having a potentially positive valence.
For example, journalistic attacks on Buffy the Vampire Slayer shortly after the
shootings at Columbine in 1999 emphasized that one episode (whose broad-
cast was deferred after Columbine) pictured a miserable teenager with a gun,
isolated in a tower within shooting range of his classmates. That the episode
centered, with great sensitivity, on the real pain of adolescence, and that the boy
with the gun was driven to consider not mass murder but rather suicide, was
simply ignored. It did not matter to angry grown-ups that Buffy examined vio-
lence in a thoughtful way; they were sure that popular culture—especially video
games and Goth music—were the root cause of the Columbine incident, and
they were eager to attack any youth media that dealt with violence, regardless of
its approach (see “Columbine” sidebar).
The important thing to remember is that every generation witnesses hysteria
about whatever media is most popular among children. Such hysteria tends to
subside when the next big thing comes along. Waves of hysteria are also shaped
by shifting political climates. With President George W. Bush, a conservative
born-again Christian, in the White House, and a Republican Congress, Janet
Jackson’s breast-baring “costume malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl snow-
balled into a national conservative Christian campaign to sanitize the airwaves
in order to keep children safe from profanity and sexually charged images. Sud-
denly, the FCC was deluged with complaints about “indecent” material, and
it responded by fining radio and TV broadcasters at a previously unheard of
rate. When Democrats have dominated Congress or the White House, concerns
about media effects have focused less on sex and more on commercialism and
the advocacy of educational programming.

EDuCaTionaL TELEvision
Alarmist declarations about the purported negative effects of media on chil-
dren will always, unfortunately, receive more attention than attempts to use
media to educate, edify, or simply entertain youth in a positive manner. Yet
there have always been a minority of educators, activists, politicians, parents,
and media producers themselves who have stood up for the potentially positive
effects that media might have on children. The FCC’s first female commissioner,
Frieda Hennock, was a strong advocate for educational programming (directed
to both adults and children) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the 1960s,
FCC chairman Newton Minow and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy en-
couraged broadcasters to create more educational programming. At the time,
“educational” children’s shows like Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo focused
on socialization and basic skills like tying one’s shoelaces. That all changed with