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The Need for Critical Media Literacy
In Teacher Education Core Curricula
MYRIAM TORRES AND MARÍA MERCADO
New Mexico State University
The “information era” has brought up new literacies, although most of them
are still not part of the K–12 curriculum or the teacher education curriculum.
One of these new literacies is critical media literacy. The purpose of this article
is to document the urgency for including this new literacy in school and
teacher education curricula given the crucial role of media as they touch every
issue impacting human life in society. Critical media literacy as understood
here includes three dimensions: (1) develop a critical understanding of how
corporate for-profit media work, driven by their political and economic vested
interests; (2) search for and support alternative, nonprofit media; and (3) characterize the role of teachers in helping students and their parents to become
media-literate users and supporters of alternative media. Critical media literacy is founded on the legitimate role of media to serve the public’s right to be
truly informed, and thereby serve democracy. However, currently we are witnessing an unprecedented concentration of for-profit media into conglomerates, in alliance with the government and especially with the federal regulating
agency—Federal Communications Commission—and other powerful institutions and corporations. Starting with this big picture, we examine and document specific cases that illustrate how these conglomerates and their allies
work to keep and to expand their power, by means of filtering information,
manufacturing consent, and controlling what the public watch, listen to, read,
think, believe, taste, dress, look like, speak, and how they perceive themselves.
The propaganda behind the banning of bilingual education in California is a
clear example in the educational arena of the role of media in helping powerful
people to manufacture voters’ consent through fabricated stories, misleading
ballot question, biased polls, etc. The second dimension of critical media literacy refers to the active involvement of every person, including school children, to support and advocate for alternative, nonprofit, public service-driven
media. Given the reasons and the evidence presented, the authors consider that
there is an urgency for including critical media literacy in the K–12 school curricula, and therefore in the teacher education core curriculum.
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“A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is commonplace to extol the power of
images in contrast with the power of words. Unlike words, images encode many
messages into the viewers’s brains and hearts subconsciously. Oftentimes images
are accompanied by sounds and other powerful signs and symbols that add to the
impact of the message.
We argue that in an “era of information” it is of utmost importance and necessity for everybody to understand how media work in terms of management of information, advertisement, and entertainment. Everybody, even a child, knows that
the goal of propaganda is to influence the behavior and thinking of the people targeted toward a subject, product, or object. The truth is that such propaganda works;
otherwise it would not be a profitable business. Propaganda strategies are not the
exclusive domain of the advertising industry, but are part of the content of all media programs, including the news industry. Aggressive propaganda by governmental agencies to promote their policies using taxpayers’s money has been documented and published by both corporate liberal media, such as the New York Times
(Barstow and Stein 2005) and also by independent media, such as Democracy Now
(Stauber 2005). The federal policy on education, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), is
one of those. This news erupted (Rendall 2005; Rich 2005) and stayed in the news
for a couple of weeks; then it vanished without any conclusive response to the
charges.
We frame our article within the area of New Literacies, which, according to
Lankshear and Knobel (2003), implies two things: (1) new forms of literacy based
on new digital electronic technologies (e.g., critical media literacy) and (2) the new
literacies as new ways at looking at literacy. The latter are in contrast to the old
ways of considering literacy as based on a psychological or technological paradigm. These authors point out that some literacies are not included in the school
curriculum even though they impact everybody’s lives. We argue that critical media literacy is one of them. Literacy as understood in this article concurs with the
foundations of literacy developed and tested by Paulo Freire (1992, 1994), and
Freire and Macedo (1987), when they stated that an educated person should be prepared to “read the word and the world.”
What Is Critical Media Literacy Anyway?
We understand critical media literacy as involving three major dimensions: (1)
closely examining how corporate for-profit mainstream media work, in terms of
economic, political, social, and cultural power; (2) developing abilities and consciousness for searching, creating, developing, and supporting alternative nonprofit independent public-interest media; and (3) understanding the educators’ responsibility to help students become critical-media’s literate and actively engaged
in alternative media use and development.
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It is important to clarify here that we are not against mass media communications per se. We are concerned with the use and abuse of the power of media to
control masses of people, especially children, for the profit of those who own
those media and their political allies. We recognize that with the arrival of electronic media and other technologies, including the Internet, communication in
general has been facilitated immensely. Nonetheless, as Sholle and Denski
(1995) put it, these developments present a paradox. On one hand, these technological advancements have great potential to enhance communication and
thereby human liberation. But, on the other hand, these same technologies have
been trapped within the capitalist rationality that has also facilitated sophisticated strategies of domination and control.
How Media Work in the Sociopolitical Context: The Big Picture
We believe it is important to examine the sociopolitical scene that we are living
in, as well as the role that the media plays, to understand the latest regressive measures and policies in education. As educators we should be dealing with the extraordinary power that media are currently playing as adjuncts of government for
implementing any type of policy that systematically favors the wealthy, corporate
agenda, and right-wing vision of the world. Monbiot (2005) called this phenomenon of the corporate U.S. media a “televisual fairyland.” However, as Martusewicz
(2002) indicated, there is indifference of many well-educated people toward examining the macro sociopolitical dynamics of media to understand the complexity of
the governmental educational policies we are facing now.
Public Interest Versus Profit Interest
The distinction between public-interest and for-profit interest driven media is
central to critical media literacy. However, this does not imply that these two basic
types of media are monolithic in themselves. Each type may have varying degrees
of independence from special interests or, in the case of corporate media, varying
degrees of commitment to their own vested interests (economic, political, etc). At
any rate, radio and TV broadcasting use airwaves, which are a public good and
hence should be used for the public interest. The basic purpose of getting a license
for using the public airwaves is to serve the public through information, entertainment, and other cultural programs. This is the raison d’etre of the Federal Communications Commission (see the FCC mission). However, the reality is that the right
of people to be fully and truthfully informed has been thwarted. Instead, we have
corporate for-profit media, which more often than not operate as filters of what the
public reads, listens, watches, believes, and thinks. Another crucial issue to consider in critical media literacy is the unprecedented concentration of media into a
handful of owners, paralleling the concentration of power and capital in corpora-
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tions. Ben Bagdikian (2004) has followed up the shrinking of the list. He maintains
that in 1983 there were fifty major media corporations, and right now the list has
dropped to five media conglomerates: ABC/Disney, CNN/AOL Time Warner,
NBC Bertelsmann, CBS/Viacom, and News Corporation-Fox. The immediate and
dangerous consequence is a dramatic reduction of perspectives in reporting and
programming and an incredible concentration of power.
In Mother Jones’s (2003) flier we find an eloquent statement of the inevitable
impact of concentration of power and control of media: “These huge conglomerates are beholden to every advertiser they can’t afford to offend. That’s a whole lot
of stories they can’t afford to run. And a whole lot of digging they can’t afford to
do.” Radio networks, even those independent from the aforementioned media conglomerates, are also getting larger and more powerful. An example is Clear Channel, which currently owns more than 1200 stations around the country. What is
happening now is that the Federal Communications Commission, rather than being the agency that regulates the communications industry and protects the public
interest, has become an advocate for the media corporations by lifting the maximum ownership cap at the local level from 35% to 45% of broadcasting stations.
As Goodman and Goodman (2004) put it, “There has been a complete abdication
by the federal government to genuinely regulate the airwaves and the broadcast industry” (303). Advocacy for the media corporations and not for the public is hardly
surprising when we find that the prior chair of the FCC, Michael Powell, then had
millions of dollars of shares of AOL stock (DeGraw 2002). This is obviously in
conflict with the internal regulation of the FCC, which reads “None of them (five
commissioners) can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business”
(FCC Consumer Guide, 3). The problem with this conflict of interest is that it
leaves completely unprotected the right of people to be truly informed and may
permit manipulative control of the public airways by media corporations for their
own benefit.
Here we need to differentiate between broadcasting media, such as radio and
TV, and printed media. In the first case, broadcasters use airwaves, a public
good, whereas printed media, Internet, and satellites have no governmental regulation. At any rate, nowadays freedom of the press belongs to those who own it
(Claybrook, cited by Canipe 2003); that is, “You are only as liberal as the man
[sic] that owns you” (Alterman 2003, 14). When we refer to media lack of sensitivity, actually we mean the owners. Ritter (2003) pointed out the problematic
situation in which honest media reporters find themselves: “What reporter would
knowingly run a story that questions the business dealings of the company at the
top of her or his paycheck? In the end, it’s not what the individual reporter wants
to write, it’s about what drives the profits for the news corporations” (15). Some
journalists finally quit the news organization. This is the case of Laurie Garrett
(2005) who explains: “When you see news as a product … It’s impossible to really serve democracy.”
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The compromise of public service for self-serving corporate interests, which
dominates corporate media today, is really an assault on democracy (Chomsky
2000a, 2000b). Chomsky explains the relationship between the market and democracy as follows: “Their roots lie in the power of corporate entities that are totalitarian in internal structure, increasingly interlinked and reliant on powerful states,
and largely unaccountable to the people” (Chomsky 2000a, 136). In a democracy it
is expected that media’s main mission is to demand accountability from all parties.
Media, Hegemony, and Mind Control
The corporate for-profit media are driven by interests antagonistic to their contractual mission of public service. Actually, they are creating hegemony through
sophisticated strategies for symbolic and ideological control. Hermann and
Chomsky’s (1988) extensive and systematic analysis of media coverage of transcendental events in Central America and around the world identified a pattern of
strategies “by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print,
marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to
get their messages across to the public” (24). They call this pattern the “propaganda model,” which consists of five major types of filters:
1. Size, ownership and profit orientation of the mass media: The more media
are concentrated, the less there is diversity of perspectives, the less democratic, but
the richer and more powerful they become.
2. The advertisement as the license to do business: If ads are the primary source
of income, they will be the primary concern of the media owners and boards of directors.
3. Sources of information: Depending on the topic, the mass media rely on
sources whose authority does not challenge their interests, such as government officials and “experts” on the topic. This model allows mainstream media and other
corporations behind them to create and maintain hegemony on information from
government, businesses, or “experts.”
4. “Flak” as a way of constraining other media/reporters whose work threatens
their interests and hegemony.
5. Communism as a red flag for degrading the opposition and scaring people.
Nowadays the evil of terrorism has replaced references to communism.
With this propaganda approach to media coverage, it is obvious that selection of
stories, victims, and cases is subject to one or more of these filters before the news
reaches the public.
Most people have reservations about the impact of mainstream media. However, when they are confronted with data from a specific story that shows indis-
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putably bias and manipulation of media, then they really understand how bad the
problem of media is. The following case is one of those examples of media bias.
Rendall and Broughel (2003), from The Center for Fairness and Accuracy
(FAIR), studied the type of sources mentioned on camera in the major evening
news program1 of each of the networks including PBS. The first study was carried out during the weeks before and after the date February 5, 2003, the date on
which Colin Powell presented to the UN Security Council the reasons for going
to war in Iraq. The second study was realized during three weeks, from March
20 (one day after the bombing of Iraq started) to April 9, 2003. Even though the
total number of sources presented on camera was different for each study (393
for the first study and 1,617 for the second), 76% were U.S. sources, and of
those, around 75% were official and prowar sources. The antiwar sources were
less than 1% in the first study and around 3% in the second study. This did not
represent the position of the general population with respect to the war, which at
that time was around one third opposed. There were no experts presented addressing nonmilitary issues such as human rights, international law, environmental devastation, and human suffering. On the contrary, there was constant cheering for military power and achievements.
A resourceful way to support the hegemony of corporate agendas and to enhance control of people’s minds is by conducting public opinion polls. In this respect Sapir and Huff (2003) noted:
Corporate polls exist mainly to validate corporate media and government disinformation and to tell the public what to think rather than reflect how they think.
The population’s apparent consent to the war on terror is virtually manufactured
by media and government. (43)
The display of the results of the poll becomes propaganda that may resonate
around the nation, as a strategy for manufacturing consent toward the issue polled.
Chomsky (1989) pointed out how government, through media and with media, is
“bounding the thinkable.” Thus, polls become a very productive game for incrementing support for the corporate-government agenda.
At any rate, as Chomsky (1989) pointed out, the methods of social control in a
so-called democratic society differ from military regimens, because they are subtle
and covert and act more on “regimenting the minds of the stupid masses” as
Lasswell (cited by Chomsky 2000a) refers to the propaganda mechanism. In the
same vein, Fiske (1993) considered that “hegemony depends on the ability of the
power bloc to win the consent of the various formations of the subordinated to the
system that subordinates them” (41). This “top-down consensus” is vulnerable to
be contested, and therefore it needs to be nourished constantly through comprehensive and repetitive propaganda.
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Cultivating Hegemony and Keeping Control
Hegemony works through the combination of consent and coercion (Fiske
1993), in which mass media place a major role through persuasive propaganda and
the use of filters such as those identified by Hermann and Chomsky (1988). George
Gerbner (1977) has developed a “cultivation theory” about the impact of images
and message systems on people’s perceptions of themselves, the world, life, and
relationships. “The effects of communications are not primarily what they make us
‘do’ but what they contribute to the meaning of all that is done (or accepted, or
avoided)” (205). Actually the “cultivation theory” refers to a much more complex
process in which dominant cultural patterns affect and are affected in this process.
Gerbner explains, “A culture cultivates the image of soft society. The dominant
communication system produces the image patterns, they structure the public
agenda of existence, values and relationships” (205). The people uses these public
images and understandings to cultivate their own images and understanding and
influence the new generations (Gerbner 1977).
Manufacture of Myths
Gerbner’s (1977) “cultivation theory” helps us to understand how media myths
are not only manufactured but “cultivated” through comprehensive propaganda, to
keep a subtle control of the public mind. The main problem with these myths is that
they appear to people as the “natural” or “normal” thing to happen. The appearance
of “normality” protects those myths from scrutiny of their sociohistorical formation, origins, maintenance, and change.
The following myths have been identified mostly in teaching a unit in critical
media literacy in which students examine cartoons, news, and other media products. For most students the completion of the assignments becomes an eye opener;
however, some popular myths emerge in their analysis, such as:
1. The myth of ideological diversity in mainstream media, when actually there
are merely slight variations of the same underlying ideology. People are led to
think that they have different perspectives of a given event just because they have
access to different channels, stations, newspapers, etc. They are not aware of the
homogeneous for-profit interests that underlie the agendas of media decision makers.
2. The myth of objectivity by claiming adherence to the “facts.” Once people
see facts, they do not question how facts were chosen and represented, and the
source of those facts.
3. The myth of political neutrality by avoiding taking an overt stance, and by
assuming that if one is not dealing with controversial issues, or one is only dealing
with “facts,” one is apolitical.
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4. The myth of balanced information: On a given issue, when alternative views
to the mainstream ones are brought up, many people think that a certain ideal type
of “balance” has been broken and that they should also be presented with the views
regarded as the “normal” or “middle ground” perspective of the story. However,
when corporate media ignore completely the alternative views of a given story,
those same people do not notice their absence.
As Parry (2004) argued, what we see happening right now is the consolidation of
right-wing media, whereas progressives, democrats, and leftists have not realized/accepted that they lag behind concerning the power of media to counteract the
right-wing agenda. McChesney (2004) maintains that media policy debate and
people participation requires that these permeating media myths be examined critically. We argue that understanding those myths is one of the first tasks of critical
media literacy.
Resonance Effect
The corporate media and government “crosspollination,” as Arundhati Roy
(2003) referred to it, is currently strategically orchestrated, extremely well-funded,
and highly effective. One of these strategies is the repetition or saturation of information that favors their agendas. We refer to this strategy as the “resonance effect.” It
seems like a key element not only in the manufacture of information but also in the
manipulation of people’s minds and emotions. It is a strategy of cultivation of people’s minds to give consent to the agenda handed to them. The resonance effect consists of repeating the same information, lemmas, texts, and images over and over
again. The repetition is very loud—from coast to coast—morning, noon, and night;
day after day; week after week—even over months—until everybody “gets” the
message. Thus, it becomes the unquestionable truth, no matter if it is based on real or
fictitious stories with created “facts.” Alterman (2003) referred to the adage “Repeat
something often enough and people will believe it”; for him “this is nowhere truer
than in American political journalism” (14). An outstanding example of such corporate media propaganda was the Clinton–Lewinsky case. How many times did we see
the image of Monica Lewinsky hugging President Clinton? Perhaps thousands of
times. Undoubtedly, right-wing groups at corporations and media orchestrated the
scandal to depose the Democratic administration and pave the way for a government
that would give them more generous prerogatives, as such has been proven to be true.
How Media Work in the Educational Context: The Manufacture
of Consent Against Bilingual Education in California
The sociopolitical context in California in the times when Proposition 227 was
voted and won was full of anti-immigrant sentiment. The demographic changes,
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including the rapid increase of people of color and immigrants from Asia and Latin
America, germinated a great deal of fear that was inflated and promoted in the
mass media. Writers such as Hanson (2003) and Huntington (2004) continue cultivating this fear as a threat to the national identity, which they assume is white, European American. Hanson’s book Mexifornia reveals his xenophobic and racist attitudes. Unfortunately these attitudes and discourses have become part of the
American narrative produced and reproduced by corporate media. The “effect of
resonance” in the campaign to eliminate bilingual education through Proposition
227 (a 1998 mandate requiring “English Only” instruction in California) can be
seen by virtue of a disputed story, a misleading question, and what in fact did not
resonate about bilingual education. The ballot initiative was conceived, financed,
and directed by Ron Unz, a multimillionaire software designer and a former Republican candiate for governor. He entitled it “English for the children, a brilliant
stroke of packaging.” Crawford (1997, 3, 1998) describes how Ron Unz and his
followers manufactured a story about a protest against bilingual education by Latino parents at Ninth Street Elementary School in downtown Los Angeles. This
story served as the basis of a myth that resonated throughout the corporate media.
The manufactured story was as follows:
Immigrant parents were forced to begin a public boycott … after the school administration refused to allow their children to be taught English. Enormous
numbers of California schoolchildren today leave after years of schooling with
limited spoken English and almost no ability to read or write English. We believe that the unity and prosperity of our society is [sic] gravely threatened by
government efforts to prevent young immigrant children from learning English.
(English for the Children, cited by Crawford 1997, 3)
Crawford (1997) disputed this story on various grounds. Alice Callaghan, who
organized the protest, was also the director of the daycare center where the protesting parents sent their children. Afterward, Callaghan became one of the leaders of
the “English for the Children” campaign.
English for the Children made skillful use of the Ninth Street boycott, a
ready-made narrative so sensational that it was retold by virtually every reporter
who covered the campaign (yet almost none ventured any original reporting that
might have spoiled the myth). (Crawford 1997, 5)
However, one end of this story was left loose by its authors (Unz-Callaghan),
and it is that prior to the protest none of those parents had requested that their children be transferred to all-English instructional classrooms.
This story created a myth about the unpopularity of bilingual education even in
the Latino population. This myth became reinforced by a poll carried out by the
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Los Angeles Times, which cultivated in voters a negative opinion of bilingual education. The question in the poll was as follows:
There is a new initiative trying to qualify for the June primary ballot that would
require all public school instruction to be conducted in English and for students
not fluent in English to be placed in a short term English immersion program. If
the June 1998 primary election were being held today would you vote for or
against the measure? (Humphrey, cited by Crawford 1997)
Eighty percent of likely voters, and 84% of Latinos, favored this prevoting
question. This vote contrasts with an exit poll, conducted also by Los Angeles
Times, in which 63% of Latinos voted against Proposition 227 (Crawford 1997,
1998). This mismatch give us some idea of how easy is to manufacture consent
when an agenda-setting outlet such as the Los Angeles Times beat the drums and
other media resonate the message.
The media bias in favor of the proponents of Proposition 227 can be seen in the
study conducted by Media Alliance (1998) on the coverage of this initiative by
leading media outlets. Some of their findings included that two thirds of the stories
did not give any definition of bilingual education, no stories examined or evaluated
the effectiveness of bilingual education, and none of the stories examined the academic research on bilingual education. They also analyzed the stories published in
the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, and San Francisco Chronicle between
November 1, 1997, and January 31, 1998. They found a total of thirty-three stories
in which there were forty-six direct quotations from Unz and other spokespeople
on behalf of Proposition 227. In contrast, there were only nineteen quotations from
the campaign “No on Proposition 227” spokespeople. In the same vein, Wiley
(2000) criticized the corporate media role in this matter, as they pay more attention
and report more “the anecdotal opinions of pundits opposed to bilingual education
rather than to the findings of educational researchers” (35).
Another factor that contributed to the myth of the unpopularity of bilingual education had to do with the lack of clarity and the ambiguity of the prevoting question
polled by the Los Angeles Times. Krashen, Crawford, and Kim (1998) modified the
question to include various implications that Proposition 227 would have on
schooling: (1) a severe restriction of the child’s native language, (2) limitation of
special help in English to one year, (3) the expectation that English language learners would learn sufficient English after one year to do school work at the same level
as native speakers of English of the same age, (4) the dismantling of current programs that have been demonstrated to be successful in helping children acquire
English, (5) holding teachers financially responsible if they violate the policy, and
(6) schools will have only sixty days to conform to the policy. When voters in this
poll were informed of the implications of the proposition, only 15% of respondents
were in favor while 71% were against the proposal. These figures contrast with
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those of the respondents to the LA Times prevoting question that resulted in 57% in
favor and 30% against the proposition. As is well-known among social and behavioral scientists, responses to a question depend strongly on how the question is
worded.
Finally, we can also see how the manufacture of consent against bilingual education is carried out by looking to what in fact did not resonate in the media stories.
There was a complete absence of fundamental and truthful information about bilingual education research, theory, and practice, such as (1) bilingual education is
not a uniform program, but rather is based on local contexts, addressing the specific needs of English language learners; (3) sheltered English immersion education for one year was not based on any studies confirming its effectiveness
(Quezada 2000); and (4) there was little or no coverage of actual schools and classrooms implementing bilingual education (Aryal 1998; Crawford 1997, 1998).
The analysis of the role of media in dismantling bilingual education in California shows their power in configuring and cultivating (using Gerbner’s terms) the
political and cultural panorama of the nation, and to a great extent of the world.
Blatant manipulation of information by and through the corporate media is growing everyday, hence the urgency by people, especially teachers, of understanding
how media work and how to counteract their complete abandonment of real public
service. This type of literacy is part of what Freire and Macedo (1987) implied
when affirming that being literate is to be able to “read the word and the world” to
function in that world.
Corporate Culture Is Taking Over Public Education
Corporate media, as adjuncts of governmental policies and of other corporations, are taking over education and impacting teacher education, teachers, and
children much more than we as educators are aware of and are ready to admit. The
case of bilingual education is just one example. Deetz (1994) called what is happening today a “universalization of managerial efforts,” by which human interests
are not ends in themselves, but means in the service of corporate interests under the
guise of efficiency and cost benefits. The challenge is for educators to become
fully aware of that impact and to start building counter-corporate media—that is,
alternative media networks driven by public interest.
Corporate media have played a very instrumental role in what Berliner and
Biddle (1995) called “The Manufactured Crisis” in the U.S. public schools, by resonating everything that discredits them and concealing the real issue of funding as
one of the creators of disparities among school rankings in achievement. Actually,
the NCLB policy aimed at “reforming” public education is facilitating its taking
over by corporations, including media corporations like Channel One. Meier
(2004) and Kohn (2004) pointed out the interconnectedness of all measures of
NCLB toward privatization in terms of moving schools from the public domain,
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and putting them in the hands of a few test and textbook publishers whose main interests are bounded by profit, rather than improving education for all that has been
the premise of public education. The participation of the corporate media in the
manufacture and resonance of the crisis in public education and the promotion of
measures such as NCLB as the great savior of this crisis, is reaching levels never
achieved before. So is the cover-up of scandals like the one involving Armstrong
Williams (Rendall, 2005), who was paid with taxpayers’s dollars to promote
NCLB. This story was buried right away with no follow up, and no accountability
was established.
Chomsky (2000a) argued that the privatization and corporatization of schools is
an attack on public schooling and hence on human rights. He contended that the
predominant culture and curriculum of schools, as well as corporate television programming, indoctrinate students so as to prevent them from asking fundamental
questions.
Another area of influence of corporate media interests is popular culture
through their power of shaping and reshaping fashions, products, identity, body,
and beauty parameters. Childhood has not escaped from the influence of information technology and the corporate production of a “kinderculture,” as Steinberg
and Kincheloe (1997) argued:
Using fantasy and desire, corporate functionaries have created a perspective on
late twentieth century culture that melds with business ideologies and free-market values. The worldviews produced by corporate advertisers to some degree
always let children know that the most exciting things life can provide are produced by your friends in corporate America. The economics lesson is powerful
when it is repeated hundreds of thousands of times. (4)
Similarly, corporate media also influence the construction and representation of
identity, which should be part of the curriculum of media literacy along with that of
being a critical consumer (Buckingham 2003). How media construct identity and
values is beyond the scope of this article.
Carlos Cortés (2000) conducted a very interesting study observing two of his
granddaughters watch and learn the TV multicultural curriculum. He concludes:
“Media teach and media consumers learn” (24). Nonetheless, most of the media’s
curriculum remains hidden and unrecognized. But this is not an obstacle for impacting the consumer. Actually, mass media educate more than teachers and parents combined (Bartolomé and Macedo 1997). These are powerful reasons for educators and parents to embrace critical medial literacy for children and hence for
teachers. Children’s entertainment programming, for instance, may teach children
about market values, stereotypes, prejudices, etc. This does not imply that they
cannot learn also about human values. However, the probability of children learning them is lower because those values are usually not marketable.
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In the same vein, Dorfman (1983) called “secret education” the unconscious
impact of media entertainment on people, and especially those more vulnerable
such as children:
Industrially produced fiction has become the primary shaper of our emotions
and our intellect in the twentieth century. Although these stories are supposed
merely to entertain us, they constantly give us a secret education. We are not
only taught certain styles of violence, the latest fashions and sex roles by TV,
movies, magazines, and comic strips; we are also taught how to succeed, how to
buy, how to love, how to conquer, how to forget the past and suppress the future.
We are taught more than anything else, how not to rebel. (ix)
When teachers and prospective teachers read this quotation, their first reaction
is: “It’s true.” Although with some reservations, many go on to admit how naïve
they have been concerning their taking for granted “true” information conveyed to
them by the media. By the way, this quote has proven to be a very good way to start
a dialogue about critical media literacy with teachers.
Turning on Alternative Nonprofit Media
As corporate media become more and more concentrated, their economic and
political power becomes concentrated as well, and the need for alternative nonprofit media becomes an urgent and necessary pursuit. Conscientious educators
have a crucial role in supporting and/or developing this type of media, whose mission is to inform with the truth and to serve the public they reach. Alternative nonprofit media are relevant to society in general and schools in particular. The communities marginalized or misrepresented in the mainstream media are by and large
the most vulnerable to the negative impact of corporate media, and thus are most in
need of alternative media that represent their voices and concerns and help them to
obtain resources and development.
Critical Media Literacy in School Curricula
Studies of media, specifically TV (e.g., Albert Bandura’s in psychology, and
George Gerbner 1977, in communication studies), have demonstrated the tremendous impact of media on people, especially those more vulnerable, such as children and adolescents. Not surprisingly, those studies have not had the necessary
resonance despite their enormous relevance to people’s lives. The corporate entertainment industry does not want their clients to know about those findings, otherwise their interests are hurt. According to a study sponsored by the Kaiser Family
Foundation (Rideout, Vandewater, and Wartella 2003) about the impact of elec-
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tronic media on infants (six years old and under), they found that these infants
spend an average of two hours daily with electronic media, mostly TV and videos.
This is one of the reasons why Scharrer (2003), a media educator, makes the
case for including media literacy in the K–12 curriculum. She focuses media literacy mainly on examining the media critically; developing strategies to mediate the
impact of media messages; learning how media messages are created, marketed,
and distributed; and developing the ability to participate in wise use of various
types of media. She is very concerned about the effectiveness of literacy education,
given the massive bombardment of media messages directed to young people and
children and the alarming number of hours that children are exposed to media programming. Scharrer approaches media literacy from a critical perspective, and
provides good data and insight on making better use of the available media. However, she does not give explicit consideration to alternative nonprofit media and
their access, support and development. When people’s concerns, ideals and ways
of life are not represented, much less served, we expect that those people would
turn to other sources of information. This is a crucial moment for critical media literacy, which should include building counter-hegemonic alternative media accessible to many people. Chomsky (1989) sees the need for people to understand the
means of control and thus to defend themselves: “citizens of the democratic society should undertake a course of intellectual self-defense to protect themselves
from manipulation and control and to lay the basis for more meaningful democracy” (viii). In the pursuit of a democratic education, understanding of mass communication is basic for understanding how power and politics work in our society.
As part of the activities of media literacy carried on in the classroom, teachers
should help students “read between the lines” of the media messages, question the
interests behind them, and learn how to look for alternative ways to be informed
and/or entertained. Because many schools have a subscription to Channel One, this
can be the starting point for lessons on critical media literacy. Molnar (1996) does
an excellent documentation and analysis of Channel One business at schools.
Briefly, Channel One consists of a twelve-minute daily program: ten minutes of
“current events” and two minutes of advertisements that target adolescents. The
contract stipulates that the program must be shown on at least 90% of school days
to at least 85% of the student population. What do schools receive in exchange for
selling their captive student audience to Channel One? Profits in the millions from
the ads go to Channel One’s owner Chris Whittle, whereas the school receives (as a
loan) a monitor in each classroom, a satellite dish, and the control console. This
type of contract leads us to believe that the real purpose of Channel One is not precisely to serve the students but to forge the mercantilist and materialist mentality of
the dominant ideology under the guise of curriculum improvement by “bringing
students the world.”
Unfortunately, the “free” market ideology has become embedded in educational goals, curricula, educational decisions and criteria, and values and culture of
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schools. Referring to the taking over of education and democracy by “free market
fundamentalism,” Giroux (2004) maintained, “schools more closely resemble either shopping malls or jails …” (2). Textbooks are part of this dominant ideology;
they define what is to be known, and whose knowledge is worth knowing (Apple
1993, 2004; Sleeter and Grant 1991). Although there has been some progress in the
past, the standards movement and the No Child Left Behind policy are taking us
back to prescriptive curricula and pedagogy. Knowledge coming from “scientific-based research” resonates through all types of media-written texts, tests, conferences, broadcast news and interviews. With few exceptions, textbook publishers
are more interested in advancing their economic and political agendas than serving
educators and children.
In studying the textbooks, teachers, prospective teachers, and students need to
understand the interests underlying choices of textbooks and prepackaged curriculum and materials. Textbooks constitute instructional media. In times of oppressive accountability by top-down curriculum, standards, and massive testing, reclaiming the constitutionally guaranteed right of academic freedom to choose
textbooks according to the professional judgment of teachers seems an insurmountable task. We believe that this task is not impossible, but it is certainly difficult. Unfortunately, because things are getting worse each day, it becomes extremely important that educators understand the role of corporate media as adjunct
to the government in the current crisis of schools and the profession of teaching.
This understanding should be followed by actions, individually and collectively, to
counteract the lack of responsiveness and relevance to people’s concerns and interests of the media products, starting with the textbooks and prepackaged curricula.
Understanding the powerful role of mass media in the search and dissemination
of knowledge and information, as well as connecting that knowledge and information with power, educators should prepare their students to resist that type of educational system and media disservice and become supporters and creators of alternative nonprofit, public interest type of media. We, as educators, can start
supporting those publishers who have demonstrated their interests in serving educators and students with high quality, culturally relevant, and socially responsive
books (e.g., Cinco Puntos, Rethinking Schools). We believe that this type of action
represents not only the defense of the basic constitutional right of academic freedom but also a moral duty.
Media “Reform”: What Everybody Can Do
At the 2003 Conference on “Media Reform” in the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the representative from Vermont, Bernie Sanders (2003), pointed
out how corporate media do not address the moral issue emanating from extremely
unequal distribution of wealth in the United States, actually the worst in the world,
where the top 1% of the people own more than the bottom 95%. He contends that
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this is just one example of irrelevance of corporate media’s work to the lives of the
majority of people:
The first problem we have is that what media do is to deflect attention from the
most important issues, depoliticize them, and prevent people from understanding the relevance of democratic government and democratic society to their
lives. And in that sense, they are doing a major disservice, not just to the issues
that we care about, but to American democracy as a whole. (Sanders 2003, p. 3)
In the same conference, Jonathan Adelstein (2003), the FCC Commissioner
who wrote a thirty-nine-page dissent to the changes in media ownership rules, indicated that media “never talk about what is really happening in the local communities. One half of 1% of all of the media coverage, according to one study, is about
local public affairs, 14% is infomercials.” Adelstein goes on to document the millions of dollars media owners make in those communities, which is never mentioned. In contrast, what resonates in these media is the amount of money raised for
charitable causes they support. He suggests that people, including teachers and
school children, should be aware and prepared to take action when the time comes
for the local media to have their licenses renewed. They can write to the regulators
to make a specific medium comply with the duty of public service that the license
implies.
Letters or other actions by individuals or small groups (e.g., a teacher and her or
his classroom) are empowering, but given the accumulation of power and control
by mass media and government, it would be naïve to think that these types of individualized actions are going to make a significant difference in their policies. Indeed, what we need now are concerted and collective ways to act if we want to have
a real impact on the way media are working. The most recent example of collective
action took place when the FCC on behalf of the media corporations—not on behalf of people—asked the U.S. Congress to approve loosening of ownership rules
at the local level. According to FCC Commissioner Adelstein (2004), the public
response was amusing: about three million messages flooded the FCC, Congress,
and other government offices, of which 99% were against this change of rules.
This achievement did happen because of concerted efforts among truly public service media (e.g. Radio Prometheus, Free Press, Democracy now) and other organizations (e.g., Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR], Center for Public Integrity, and Center for Constitutional Rights), and the FCC Commissioners Adelstein
and Philips themselves went around the country talking to people about the implications of those changes. This information does not reach the public because major
corporate media do not carry it. Vested interests are more important to them than
serving the public.
There are various concrete strategies that educators can embrace to involve students in media reform. Sanders (2003) suggested that the best way to counteract
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corporate media’s great disservice to the public and to democracy is by making the
concentration and corporate control of media a political issue. By this he means to
make candidates, representatives of the government, and above all the general public talk about it, and to make a commitment to study the issue and work toward having media comply with their public service duty or they will face a public boycott.
This will be a genuine opportunity to learn about democratic participation. We
think that it might make an impact if a local newspaper, TV, or radio station received a letter signed by numerous students stating that they have agreed not to
read, watch, or listen to a given program anymore. They could allude to reasons
such as misrepresentation and/or stereotyping of some cultural groups, and/or
complain that they do not address the real issues that they have.
Another strategy that Sanders proposes has to do with visits and pressure on
media at the local level. He considers that it is up to the local people to organize
themselves and go to the local mass media (newspapers, radio, and TV stations),
and request their directors to include progressive voices to counterbalance the
mainstream, procorporation and progovernment voices of extreme right-wing
pundits. He advises these organized groups to spell out to the corporate media
representatives the consequences of not being inclusive, such as boycotts of
products advertised there, and the use of means such as protests in front of their
buildings.
Sanders (2003) also called attention to the disservice of public broadcasting to
the American people. As soon as he started talking about it, the people attending
the media reform conference gave him a tremendous ovation. This fact shows how
urgent and relevant this topic is for people. It is common knowledge that the public
broadcasting media have sold themselves to major donors such as the oil companies and Wall Street. In this respect, at the Second Media Reform Conference in St.
Louis, Bill Moyers (2005) addressed the problem of the chair of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting whose questionable actions show his commitment to the
government by his silencing criticisms of the government and interpretations of reality differing from the official. Indeed, Moyers came to understand that today
“news is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity.” In the
same vein, McChesney (2004) proposed to rescue the mission of public broadcasting by increasing the local relevance, which is almost absent in commercial media,
and by working in collaboration with other independent nonprofit media.
As educators, we feel powerless at times because we cannot get our voices
heard. The voices that resonate in the corporate media also constitute the official
discourse of public education, the top-down policies, each one more prescriptive
and controlling. Progressive voices have been co-opted, deemphasized, or excluded totally from their programming. We believe that educators, students, and
parents can use the strategies that Representative Sanders (2003) advocates, and
many more. We agree with him that “there is in my view no issue more important
than this [corporate control of media], because it touches all other issues.”
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A study carried out by Charles Lewis (2003) and collaborators in the Center for
Public Integrity produced, among other things, a comprehensive database of the
broadcasting radio and TV stations, cable and telephone network per geographic
area. To find out who own the media within forty miles of your home, you can just
enter your zip code on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity
(http://www.publicintegrity.org) in the “Well Connected—Databases”. This is really useful for teachers as well as students and their families to become literate in
the type of media that supposedly serve them. By learning about the owners, their
prime interests, and political orientation, we can make more informed choices.
The Time Is Ripe for Alternative Media
In addition to understanding how corporate media work, critical media literacy
includes the ability to search, to support, and to develop alternative nonprofit media. The new technologies of communication (e.g., Internet) have provided many
of us with real possibilities for accessing a growing number of independent nonprofit media whose main mission or agenda is to serve the public with serious, relevant, and opportune information, and often with entertainment as well. Alternative
media workers, more often than not, work under very constrained economic situations because they depend on the support of the communities they serve, and are
also under pressure from the corporate media that try to suffocate and discredit
their work. To keep their independence, they must avoid large donations from corporations or individuals. So, if one is turning to independent media—commercial
free—one incurs a moral obligation to support their work financially.
Today there are facilities for developing alternative non-profit forms of communication, such as electronic networks through e-mail and Web sites, as well as
nonelectronic forms, such as art, theater, newsletters, and forums. Willinsky
(2002) perceived these new technologies of communication as promising media
for creating open access to educational knowledge. He considers that this would
bring into being some of the principles of democratic education that Dewey (1916)
was promoting, including access to relevant, important, and credible knowledge.
The type of electronic public library that Willinsky proposed would provide open
access to knowledge produced by educational researchers and practitioners who
are willing to publish and share their achievements.
However, as Bettina Fabos (2004) documented, what was created as “the information superhighway” has been commercialized at such a rate that we are even
losing what we had before the Internet was invented. Fortunately, there is still free
access to a great deal of information and fast communication among special interest groups for their activism. Democracy Now’s (2004) interview on the issue of
private versus community-based providers of high-speed Internet access. Many
people cannot afford to pay for it, yet the Internet has become part of the modus
operandi of communications. It is even necessary for doing homework. Jeffrey
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Chester, from the Center for Digital Democracy, argues that Internet access (40%
of households have no Internet access) is a first amendment right, and that the cable and telephone companies are working to prevent community-based Internet access as another possibility for this service. Steven Titch, from Heartland Institute
counterargues that is a bad idea to spend community resources for providing a service that is already available at low cost. In addition, this competition is unfair to
existent providers of Internet access. We consider that active involvement in defending the Internet from becoming fully privatized and commercialized should be
part of the agenda of families, schools, community organizations, and the public in
general. But along with these advances in quantity and quality of ways of communication among people, there is also an enhancement of ways to influence and control people. We agree with Willinsky (2002) about using these new media technologies to make organized scholarly knowledge accessible to all the people. The
issue concerning the “digital divide” often is focused merely on the haves and
have-nots with respect to computers, telephone lines, and access to the Internet.
We think that the most important dimension is free access to information that is important to peoples’ lives and careers, and not simply access to a mountain of “information” that is becoming absolutely useless and even harmful. The people who are
unable to access the Internet from home should be able to access it on public library computers.
Concluding Reflections
We believe that among the latest advancements of the “Age of Information,”
mass corporate media have become the most powerful instrument to reproduce and
maintain dominant values and culture. We have documented the case both in its
sociopolitical as well as educational context, indicating the impact of corporate
media on the determination of government policies and what we as the public read,
watch, listen to, think, believe, and act. We know that corporate control of media
and government is happening not only in the USA but everywhere, although with
varying degrees of credibility by the people. The impact of media messages is effective even when we do not believe them, as Cortes (2000) found out.
We consider that the inclusion of critical media literacy as part of the foundations of education, and hence a component of the core curriculum of teacher education, is long overdue. Teachers as well as students are among the most vulnerable
populations to be impacted by the mass media. Unfortunately this impact is usually not for their benefit. The stories and evidence presented in this article make obvious to us the central role of critical media literacy in the curricula of schools and
hence of teacher education. It is important to say here that some efforts in this regard are happening. There is, for example, the New Mexico Media Literacy Project
(NMMLP), which has developed curricula about issues such as advertisements in
general and is broadening the scope to areas such as health and social issues. This
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is a nonprofit organization, but it is still not reaching most of the population, including public schools.
As teacher educators, we consider that critical media literacy is a must considering the current situation in education and the sociopolitical context of privatization
of all social services and marketization of education. Following are what we consider the major purposes of critical media literacy: (1) as intellectual self-defense,
(2) to discover and support the increase in number and in power of independent
nonprofit media, (3) to develop alternative media networks among special interest
groups using the new advanced media and multimedia technologies, and (4) to
make information available on the democratic premise of education for all.
We want to ratify what we have stated at the beginning of this article. Critical
media literacy, as we understand it, focuses on the use and abuse of mass media
power by putting profit (economic and political) first and service to the public last.
Indeed, we are not against the benefits of mass media’s advanced technologies for
improving the quality of communication among all sorts of people and facilitating
their democratic participation in the society in which they live. Precisely this type
of role is what we understand as public service, which should be provided by any
type of mass media operating in the public domain.
Note
1. ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer
Reports, Fox’s Special Report with Brit Hume, and PBS’s News Hour With Jim Lehrer
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Correspondence should be addressed to Myriam N. Torres, Literacy/Language Arts,
Department of Curriculum & Instruction, New Mexico State University, MSC 3
CMR, P.O. Box 30001, Las Cruces, NM 88001. E-mail: [email protected] or
[email protected]