Watching TV Watching Us

Probably the major leisure time activity of the western world is watching and listening to broadcasting. For most of the day, our senses are battered by images from the television or sounds from the radio. And yet, for most of us, very little teaching effort is spent on preparing us to view TV or listen to the radio critically.

For instance: since the last article was written for this page of Suite101, the world has seen the wall-to-wall coverage of the execution of the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. Like most western countries, here in New Zealand the stories led the news bulletins on TV and radio. That was reflected in most English speaking countries and in many other lands too.

But how did you FEEL, as you watched the live CNN coverage of the event? Did it feel like a media circus? Had CNN (or whichever channel you were watching or hearing) handled the story responsibly? As the journalist who wrote much of the radio copy that brought the news to this country’s radio networks, I can tell you I felt uncomfortable at times. At what point did voyeurism take over from the public’s right to see justice being done? Was I providing balance and perspective? Were the news sources feeding our newsroom being accurate and objective in their reporting? I hope so, I really do.

This raises a wider question. How prepared are we for broadcast media? Do schools tell us how to watch a programme and analyse if the producer of that programme is manipulating us? Are there any guidelines to help US be objective as we watch TV or listen to the radio?

The University of Oregon’s Media Literacy Online Project poses the big question at its online site: It says

Television is manufactured. TV is not a "window on the world," or a "mirror of society." It is not accidental, capturing reality when, as luck would have it, a camera happened to be turned on. Television is a carefully constructed by teams of communication workers. Nothing you see or hear on TV is left to chance.

So do children get much in the way of guidelines to the media? Sadly, the answer is often ‘no’. In 17 or so years of school education, not ONE SINGLE LESSON did I ever receive which taught me whether a broadcast was good or bad, manipulative or objective, honest or hokey. Nowadays, there are Media Studies classes – but they often seem to be run as options for students who can’t cope with ‘proper’ subjects, such as English Literature or History.

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