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Reception of religion and media 119

Bonnie: Well, not every day.
Dale: But it’s pretty close.
Bonnie: Since we work we have the evenings where we’re getting lunch or
dinner prepared. Ahh . . . I don’t watch Oprah like I used to (laughs).
Interviewer: So when the news is on, you’re not sitting down and watching it?
Bonnie: We do. No that’s our time to sit down and watch TV.
Interviewer: And by “our” you mean the kids watch too?
Bonnie: They’re in bed by then.
Interviewer: So what time do they go to bed?
Bonnie: We try to get them in bed by eight.
Dale: Yup.
Bonnie: Because that’s our quiet time.
Dale: If they (the kids) watch TV, they watch cartoons or something.
This is an interesting passage particularly in light of the great volume of
social research on media use that has depended on this sort of “self-
report” as a reliable way to assess television viewing. Dale and Bonnie
want to say that they are regular news viewers, and name several programs
(local news, MSNBC, and Dateline) that they watch every day. When the
interviewer suggests that what they are describing would add up to two
hours a day, that seems like too much. While our purpose here is not to
uncover the “truth” of their behavior, it is nonetheless interesting to specu-
late about what this report may mean about their actual viewing.
What it says about their self-narratives is that news is a value for them,
and that they like to think of news as something they should do every day
and something that they consume during what they call their “quiet time.”
When the conversation moves on to the media habits of their children,
Don and Carson, the Johnson parents note that, that day, the boys have
been watching Power Puff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Courage the
Cowardly Dog. 10 Bonnie jokes with the kids about Courage, the dog, a
program she obviously has watched with them. Courage, it seems, uses a
computer and the Internet in most plots. Bonnie observes,

Bonnie: That’s Dale’s source of media – the computer.
Interviewer: So you use it for school?
Dale: For school, yeah. For my internship I get on Word or Microsoft
Publisher. Today, I gotta do Excel. And if I’m not doing that and I turn
on the computer it’s for Minesweeper. I rarely check my e-mail.
Bonnie: And I don’t use the computer at all.
Interviewer: [to Bonnie] You don’t use it all?
Interviewer: [to Dale] So you’re using it every day?
Dale: No, no. I use it probably about three or four times a week to play
Minesweeper. And that’s, I’d say, about a half hour to 40 minutes if I
do play it. But I don’t go on the Net. I don’t surf the Net.