Page 277 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Med a Watch Groups

preferences. With democratization often comes dilution of critical sensibility, but the invita-
tion to participate in shaping or reshaping media’s messages portends new horizons for
media-watching cohorts joined together in new ways. When MoveOn.org sought to energize
its members in 2004, one of its gambits was to coordinate house parties featuring Robert
Greenwald’s documentary detailing the nefarious methods of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News,
“Outfoxed.” Citizens’ acquisition of the lexicon and outlook of media watch professionals is
likely to continue apace. With ever-increasing numbers of news consumers obtaining their
information from the Internet, ready access to media beyond the nation’s borders can serve
as a reality check against nationalist and establishmentarian blinders, though guidance may
still be needed for the majority who would not yet think to explore abroad, even at the
keyboard. A Babel of voices may diffuse some of the critical clarity required to upgrade jour-
nalistic standards, and even invite more vague and misleading reportage geared toward the
lowest common denominator. But the wisdom of crowds will be tested as engagement with
the ethos of critical media consumption is given the opportunity to grow.

sChoLar waTChDogs

While CJR and AJR are affiliated with educational institutions, their perspec-
tives more closely mirror the backgrounds of the professional journalists who
guide them than those of media studies and journalism scholars. The scholarly
practice of media criticism has enjoyed an extended boom, however, and many
media watch groups cite scholars from diverse disciplines on framing, agenda-
setting, and priming, to name a few of the more prominent theoretical constructs.
Other media critics straddle academe and journalism, attracting multiple and
mixed constituencies in the process. The media-focused work of foundations
such as Annenberg and Pew attracts substantial attention, while media watch
communities of a sort could also be said to revolve around specific columnists,
such as The Nation’s press critic Eric Alterman, Professor of English at Brook-
lyn College of the City University of New York, who is also senior fellow and
“Altercation” Weblogger for Media Matters for America, having been dropped
as a blogger by MSNBC.com. Scholarly credentials might boost a writer’s sta-
tus as an avatar of media criticism, but the lack of same could hardly be said to
stand in the way of participation through readership and subscriber status, let-
ters to the editor, and informal opinion leader activities. Readers of The Nation,
like those of publications such as CounterPunch, The Progressive, Mother Jones,
or the American Prospect, could be classed generally as media watch groups in
their own right, highly attuned to the procorporate bias of mainstream media
and not shy about trumpeting it.
Numerous academic scholars have over the years also developed media cri-
tiques for educational and documentary videotapes produced by a variety of
independent media organizations. One of the first such productions featured
Professor Herbert I. Schiller in a humorous critique of the New York Times, pro-
duced by the Paper Tiger Television collective, which began as a public access
channel in New York City in the early 1980s.