Page 264 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Med a L teracy: Creat ng Better C t zens or Better Consumers? |

AMLA, for example, does accept corporate funding, based on the rationale that
commercial media must take responsibility for educating consumers about the
material they produce and distribute. They also point out that media literacy
education in the United States is still underdeveloped and the visibility and fi-
nancial resources of big media organizations is necessary in order to get the
message out to as many people as possible. ACME, on the other hand, believes
that funding from corporate media inherently limits the critical possibilities of
media education and hinders the potential for connecting media literacy to is-
sues of media reform and activism. For example, Channel One’s “Media Mas-
tery” media literacy curricula, which has been made available to thousands of
schools, does not include any mention of the corporate role in shaping media
content.

Core ConCePts oF Media literaCy

Despite many differences in their approaches to media literacy, many educators and advo-
cates agree on a number of core concepts, such as the following:

1. All media are constructed and media construct our sense of reality. Media images
do not just appear from nowhere. They are made by people and organizations in
order to convey particular ideas. Media therefore are not just reflections of reality.
Most of what we think we know about people, places, and events that we have not
experienced comes to us directly from media. Even when we experience something
ourselves our understandings of what we have experienced may be shaped by media
images and stories.
2. Different members of the audience will interpret media in different ways. Not every-
one will respond to media messages in the ways that the producers intend. Our back-
grounds play an important part in how we read a given message. However, media
messages will often be read similarly by large numbers of people and often we do
accept the producers’ vision.
3. Most media is created by profit-oriented businesses and has commercial implica-
tions. In the United States only a small number of large corporations own and con-
trol the vast majority of the media people read, see, and hear. The primary purpose
of this media is to generate profits for the shareholders of the corporations. Infor-
mation and entertainment are secondary considerations. In television, for example,
the point of the programs is to get viewers in front of the set so that they may be
exposed to the “real” programming—the commercials.
4. Media contain value messages and have social implications. All messages reflect the
biases of their producers. Even media that appear to be just for entertainment tell us
stories about the world that suggest how we should think about it. Movies, for exam-
ple, show us images of men and women interacting and suggest to us what it means
to be a real man or a real woman and what are acceptable sorts of gender relations.
5. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form that influences its content. A news story
in a primarily visual medium such as television will convey its messages differently