Teaching for Critical media Literacy
Paul Arenson (2001 Kitakyushu)
LINK TO ARCHIVED VERSION (cleaner due to porting difficulties)
Teaching for Critical Media Literacy
Paul Arenson (2001 Kitakyushu)
JALT Conference, Friday, 23 November; Room 21B; 13:30-13:55:00; Short Paper
The conference version of this paper is intentionally shorter than the
online version, since references to online resources are best perused
online. I doubt that anyone relishes sitting at the computer and typing
in the URLS for the links and sources I cite, and so you will only find
a few essential links mentioned here. What I hope to share in this paper
is how and why I make use of so-called ?galternative media?hin the
foreign language classroom, with the online version containing links to
articles that have encouraged me to do so as well as examples of the
kind of media resources I use. This paper also discusses some of the
fears and concerns I have experienced while working with such material.
With that in mind, please understand that when I talk about alternative
media in the classroom, I am talking equally about the thought one needs
to put into how to use it.
Anti-Authoritarianism: An Early Rationale
I have always been a person with activist tendencies. When I was a
high school student in New York City from 1967 to 1970, a friend with a
newborn baby had been arrested for refusing the military draft, and I
was debating with myself as well as my family--who supported m--whether I
would stay and follow in his footsteps or seek refuge in a third country
like Canada or Sweden if called upon by Uncle Sam to?gkill for peace?h. I
use this ironic term intentionally, because this was the dilemma many of
us faced at the time. Such contradictions abounded in a society where
assumed values such as compassion and freedom were manipulated in the
service of the military industrial complex.
Well, thankfully, my selective service number was something like 100 and
they only called up to 98 or 99 that year (they employed a lottery
system), and so I neither had to go into voluntary exile or be
imprisoned, and I eventually made my way into teaching. I was naturally
attracted to approaches such as Silent Way (SW) and Community Language
Learning (CLL) because they claimed, more than competing approaches at
the time, to foster ?gindependent learners?h, something which appealed
to the anti-authoritarian in me. Of course, nothing is black and white,
and I now know that even alternatives carry with them the seeds of dogma,
which can blind us in our mission to be free of other dogmas. An
interesting anecdote I want to share is that when pressed for
recommendations on materials and techniques for more advanced learners
(a discussion of which advocates of SW and CLL both seemed to skirt at
the time,) I was referred by both my SW and CLL mentors to the work of
another New Yorker, Bill Bernhardt and his workbook ?gJust Writing?h
.What this teaches me is that despite our differing visions and reasons
for doing what we do, there is often a broad area of agreement. I hope,
therefore, that what I have to say is of benefit even if we do not
necessarily agree on everything. [link 1: Alternative approaches]
Global Issues Not Initially an Issue
I have been in Japan since 1979, and for much of that time I did not
actively incorporate global issues into my teaching. My difficulty in
coming to terms with my role as an authority figure, given my dislike
for authoritarianism, was initially expressed in various subversive ways
within the narrow confines of how I taught English in a relatively
traditional classroom setting. For one thing, I tried to incorporate bits
and pieces of more ?glearner friendly?hmethodologies into my teaching,
emphasizing--like many of us now do--the communicative over drill work as
an end in itself. To this day, I shun textbooks where none are required
and find creative ways to use them where I have no choice. Sometimes I
have found that my approach has worked just as well as more traditional
approaches, but the reason for this may simply be that, as least at the
International Education Center (where students come for 3-6 hours a day
for two years and have a number of different teachers), no one of us can
do that much ?gdamage?h. By this I mean that many of us have strong,
often inflexible notions of what and how we should teach, but because
students get a chance to work with so many teachers in our program, no
one teacher or dogma tends to dominate. Students are probably grateful
to be able to have exposure to a variety of personalities and teaching
styles, and I do not claim that what I do works any sort of magic. If
everyone did everything the same way, I am sure it would be overkill.
[link 2: Where I teach]
In fact, if there is any consistency in how students respond to what I
do, it is that it is never predictable, and the same activities done
with two classes of similar ability during the same semester often
result in favorable reviews in one class and something very different in
the other.This alone should give one pause to doubt anyone who claims,
including me, that they have the answers to all your problems. All I can
do is share what works, at least sometimes, and my reasons for doing
it. I believe that more than anything, it is the attitude we bring to our
jobs that makes the most difference, and simply injecting a new activity
into one?fs daily routine rarely turns out to be as rewarding as it
first seems. That is why I am prefacing the main part of my presentation
with what must seem to be fairly tangential. If you can see where I am
coming from, perhaps it will suggest to you other solutions that will
work just as well, if not better, for you. I do not pretend to offer any
solutions, although I hope my views on the inadequacy of the mainstream
media will resonate with many of you and that we may even find some way
to build on our isolated, individual efforts that can be mutually useful.
Bringing the World Into the Classroom: An Early Rationale
While most of my teaching did not, until relatively recently, deal with
global issues in any consistent manner, it didn?ft take me long to feel
that there might be value in inviting the outside world into my
classroom. For one thing, it was forced upon me one evening when a
student--an adult in his thirties--reported on a seemingly innocuous
discussion his group had just had, noting without any hesitation the
dislikes of his classmates, which included natto, work, and Koreans.
Fighting the temptation to express outrage or even to lecture the
students on appropriate utterances, I nevertheless felt frustration as I
simply said something like ?gI see?hin a neutral voice and hurriedly
went on to the next group. Was I supposed to have admonished the student,
or was I--as someone who believed in freedom of thought--supposed to
provide a safe place where people could express any idea without fear of
being silenced or ridiculed? Was I supposed to provide a moral compass
for my students, or was it even fair for me to impose my values on the
class by virtue of the fact that I was, at least nominally ?gin charge?h?
Was I, indeed, supposed to care about what came out of people?fs mouths
or--being, after all, an ?gEnglish Teacher?h--only supposed to be
grateful they were saying anything at all?
I didn?ft find answers to those questions then, and I still do not think
there is one answer that fits all situations, no more than is there a
single satisfactory way for any of us to deal with things our fellow
human beings do and say to us outside the classroom. When a fellow
teacher once said to another colleague, in a loud voice, that shrewd
Hong Kong shopkeepers were the ?gJews of Asia?h, I remember sheepishly
saying, ?gEr, Doug, I?fm Jewish?h, to which he replied, red-faced, ?gOh,
I?fm sorry; I didn?ft know.?h As if his remarks were inappropriate
because I was listening in on his conversation. Certainly, if I had been
black, he would have been more careful before opening his mouth, though
here in Japan one can find people making disparaging remarks about ?g
gaijin?h even when someone obviously fitting that description is
standing nearby. I wonder what others would have done. [link 3:Feedback]
(Or join list and discuss)
But there are times when we may choose to respond with outrage, times
when we may temper that outrage in the belief or hope that the person
can change, times when we even question whether the remark is really
inappropriate or not. An example of this can be seen when someone
criticizes the Israeli occupation and is accused of being an
anti-Semite. In such a case, despite my Jewish background, which I find
irrelevant, I am extremely critical of what I see as colonial and racist
behavior by Israel, and it is not always easy to tell if persons
condemning the actions of ?gthe Jews?hare themselves guilty of harboring
racist thoughts or simply making a political observation.
Coming back to my student, I should say that about the same time I had
become active in supporting the rights of the predominantly ethnic
Koreans who were then protesting discriminatory Japanese government
policies deriving from their and their ancestors?f loss of nominal
Japanese nationality at the end of World War II. Fingerprinting of even
second and third generation descendants of former colonial subjects was
the most obvious bureaucratic legacy of this era, one partially enforced
by the GHQ acting in concert with unrepentant post-war Japanese
officials to stem the tide of communism in North Korea, China and the
Soviet Union. [Link 4: Korean residents in Japan]
As my awareness of discrimination and other social ills in Japan grew,
it was harder to avoid comments by students, just as I could not sit
still when a passing fellow five-year-old once called me a ?gnigger
lover?h when he saw me playing outside with a visiting friend in my
lily-white New York neighborhood, Ozone Park. [Link 5: Howard Beach]
Guest Mentality vs. Missionaries
And yet, there was another context I had to consider--that of being a
?gguest?h in the country. Now normally I don?ft subscribe to the notion
that I am a guest. I consider Japan my home, and I do not feel there is
any valid reason to consider myself less worthy of participating in and
commentating on the society in which I live. And yet, I am constantly
made aware of other ?gtransplants?h who do feel free to expound on the
evils of this country, using the United States as some model of what an
enlightened country is supposed to be. In fact, I sometimes resent how
this notion is reinforced by curriculum, texts and teachers, which
reminds me of nothing so much as missionaries out to convert the ?gwild
savages?h. Even students come to mouth the orthodoxy that the U.S. is a
land of freedom and opportunity in contrast with their own. No
consideration that if this were so, we would not have the massive
movements for social, racial, economic, and sexual justice that we do
have in the United States.
This sort of thinking is anathema to me, reminding me of George Bush?fs
implied crusade against ?gheathen?h terrorists, immune to any suggestion
that bombing a country back into the stone age out of retaliation is
also terrorism. And yet, here some of us are, going on and on about the
inequities of this society, not sufficiently aware that we may be (or
may be seen as) failing to give equal treatment to the inequities in
their own societies.
So, like it or not, faced with students feeling free to express their
dislike of Koreans, I found myself risking being seen as an arrogant,
presumptuous hypocrite if I came down on them too hard. Yet it was as
disingenuous not to say something. I also discovered that this desire to
correct ?gimproper?h behavior had something in common with another
annoying blind spot teachers tend to have: we tend to confuse
instruction with learning. Moreover, we tend to assume that we must be
experts and in command of everything we talk about, resisting the
thought that our students can at times rise above us. In short, we hold
our students down because it threatens our authority as teachers and
possessors of knowledge. I gradually began to see the relevance and
importance in addressing these uncomfortable bits of reality which
occasionally intruded on the sterile non reality of the classroom, but
in a way that did not place me on a superior moral plane, that
acknowledged that we are, all of us, capable of doing and saying things
which are injurious to others, if not always universally accepted as
such.
Global Issues Pitfalls
Another compelling reason for my shifting views on broaching
controversial subjects was my involvement in the anti-nuclear movement
and my initial contacts with other teachers here in Japan whose
anti-nuclear teaching efforts were a logical outgrowth of direct
national/personal experience with the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Here we were in the age of Ronald ?gRay-Gun?fs?h Star Wars Part
I (Part II is now with us courtesy of George Bush, fils) and the nuclear
freeze movement, and I was glad to see teachers in Japanese high schools
dealing with this issue. And yet, even when I knew that many of my
Japanese anti-war colleagues were as opposed to Japanese militarism as
they were to the American bombings, somehow their teaching tended to be
unfocused and too broadly anti-war so as to give fuel to the inaccurate
perception, often voiced by those who defend the atomic bombings, that
they were casting Japan as the victim and not the aggressor. I know many
of these teachers personally,and most have been in the forefront of
moves to democratize education, often being penalized for their
criticism of and even acts of defiance against the Education Ministry?fs
nationalistic decrees. And yet, much of their teaching activities seemed
to steer clear of issues such as war guilt, or current conflicts and
stay in the relatively safe area of war victimization. How this would
prepare students for coping for real world issues is anyone?fs guess.
(Such issues are indeed now weighing down upon Japan, where inaccurate
and incomplete media/government rationales like ?ghelping the U.S. fight
terrorism?hgo unchallenged as the nation is coaxed and tricked into
trashing its anti-war constitution.) [Link 6:Article]
At the same time, it often seemed that activities were completely
teacher-centered (such as having students write ?gpeace letters?h) with
little consideration given to helping students develop their own
critical facilities, something which seems important if one believes
that being a world citizen requires active involvement in the world. It
seemed that teachers were unwilling to risk encouraging a situation
where their students came to the conclusion--no matter how
distasteful--that war, colonialism, terrorism and even retaliatory
terrorism were all acceptable options. And yet, I came to feel that
unless we created an environment in which students were both free to
express their opinions and exposed in a non-threatening way to other
opinions which challenged theirs, we were still very far from our goal
as educators seeking to encourage enlightenment and, ultimately, a
better world.[Link 7:Progressive English Teachers ]
Learning in the Real World: Link Between Other Courses and Alternative Media
Given my growing awareness of both a need to expose students to other
sources of information and opinion, which might in turn help them
develop and express their own views (something which would be of great
help to most of us, not just language learners), I began to note certain
limitations with the courses I teach at the International Education
Center. My colleagues and I had been among those who helped move the
curriculum away from ?gmanufactured?h, made-for-learners material in the
early 80s, which saw greater emphasis on using discussion and debate, as
well as TV news and newspapers in the classroom. Expected problems
inherent in using real world material, such as lack of control for
vocabulary, had been partially dealt with by creating vocabulary work
sheets for TV news and newspaper articles, but this created another
problem. In order to have time to prepare such ?gaids?h, we tended to
pre-select stories that would not go out of date, in effect rendering
our material much more like the ready-made textbook lessons we so
despised, out of touch with what is happening now. The dilemma of how to
take language learning out of the realm of non-reality was still very
much with us.
An interesting thing to note is that at about the same time we began
allowing the real world into our curriculum, there was a debate among
composition teachers over whether one needed to teach formal aspects of
writing in a certain order before students could express themselves
freely on a topic of their own choosing. Those who held this formalist
view tended to also believe that one cannot teach the future tense
before students learn the present, though there has been quite a bit of
research suggesting that teaching the future first makes a great deal of
sense cognitively. Some teachers tended to work up from the sentence
level to paragraphs and from paragraphs to whole compositions, but it
was my observation that what students gained in the way of being able to
create well-organized pieces of writing was counteracted by a certain
vapidity of content. Students could get high marks for form without being
required to say anything. This is very much a criticism that some
proponents of real-world writing methodology make, one such person being
Bill Bernhardt, whose whole body of work concerns the fostering of
independent learners (See link 1) . So, if you want to, you can find a
common thread running between my views on both writing and media
literacy.
In the case of writing, I found that allowing students to start at the
paragraph level and work their way back to the sentence level was often
more effective in that it allowed them to get what was of concern to
them onto paper as quickly as possible before focus on form diluted
their message or forced it into a straitjacket that pleased teachers but
left them detached from the ultimate product. Likewise, with newspapers,
I found that starting with what was happening in the world, and why it
might be of concern to us was a better place to start than dividing the
semester into units such as ?gstraight news articles?h, ?gfeature
stories?h, ?geditorials?h, etc. After all, what is one to make of a
so-called ?gstraight news story?h which uses terms such as ?g
humanitarian intervention?h or ?gwar against terror?h without analysis,
as if these are neutral terms without editorial content, without bias,
without any attempt to steer the reader in a certain direction? (see
link 8) With news, however, the dilemma is two-fold because even if we
place less emphasis on how to read a newspaper, relying on the
mainstream media for content is going to leave us in a serious quandary.
We need to be able to find ways of interpreting and analyzing what is
passed off as incontrovertible fact, which presents a far greater
challenge than that offered by teaching composition. [Link 8:
Definitions of Alternative and Mainstream Media]
Not Only a Problem For Language Learners
Frustration with a model of learning that places emphasis on form
continued as I saw that what we were doing in most of the courses was
presenting language in a way that was logical and manageable but not
very successful in helping students integrate the real world into their
evolving English language capabilities. In the case of newsreading, this
insured they would remain uncritical of the institutions of power which
actually control the presentation of news, and remain uninformed or
misinformed about many issues. Not necessarily better or worse than
non-langauge learners, to be sure, but something which nevertheless
distressed me. Initially all I could do was make comments on what
students reported, asking them if they believed a statement to be fact,
suggesting they check further to see if they could find any alternative
views and analyses.
This was unsatisfactory for several reasons. For one thing, it elevated
me to a position I despise: a position of authority, an arbiter of truth,
taking responsibility for their own learning away from students. It also
failed to provide a means ( see link 9) of finding those alternative
views of which I spoke. Independent confirmation of received truths and
dogma is harder than it seems. Even if one has lived through Vietnam,
through Iran-Contra, through previous attempts by Japan?fs conservatives
(those who tend to justify Japan?fs role in World War II) to bring back
militarism, it is quite human to forget, to fail to draw connections
between events in the past and the present that might lead us to
question the motivations of leaders who call for making an ?g
international contribution?h in defense of what everyone from Superman
to George Bush and Junichiro Koizumi refers to as ?gtruth, justice and
the American (Japanese?) way?h. If ordinary mortals are seduced by the
media to believe that all is as they say it is, how much greater the
danger when language learners--who tend to confer an almost deity-like
status on their teachers--are not shown how to independently assess what
is presented (by their teachers or by the media) as fact.
My Cat Offers an Alternative
Around that time, many of my colleagues, bitten by Internet fever, were
wasting no effort to create their own home pages, yet I was more or less
left cold. I saw no reason to have my own site, since whatever Internet
sites I used seemed more than enough. Having one?fs own Internet site
seemed to me to be nothing more than an exercise in vanity. Also, as I
had been one of the (1) early participants in the Internet ?grevolution?h
which was once promoted as an ?ginformation superhighway?hbut which was
fast becoming touted as a vehicle for ?ge-commerce?h, I was more than a
little disillusioned by this sudden discovery of the Internet as a
vehicle for ?gself-promotion?h.
(1) [I was one of the charter members of TWICS, an old Bulletin
Board System community that eventually became one of the first Internet
Service Providers in Japan.]
But it was the sudden illness of my cat that intervened and helped me to
see how having a website might enable me to become a better teacher
insofar as it helped students to interact with the world around them. At
the same time it helped suggest ways we might all benefit by stepping
out of the comfort of our own narrow range of beliefs and meeting those
with other worldviews halfway.
When my cat, Chibi, became sick and I realized that she would not be
with us forever, I decided to create a memorial for her, which became
the nucleus around which my site was to develop. From the time she
became sick until her death--a period of 3 years--I also became somewhat
reflective, trying to understand how our love for those who matter to
us is related to our worldview. And so I gradually added other things
that seemed to put the different strands of my existence into some sort
of order, not unlike what I might do if I were creating a composition.
Some of my songs--llove songs and political ballads--were added, and then
some of the articles and links that mattered most to me. Eventually, I
found that others, including students, could relate to these. Perhaps
this was because my site was both personal and political, a mixture that
I found lacking on most of the Internet sites I knew.
A Tool, not a Methodology
From there, it was but a short step to turning my web site into a tool
that students (in fact, anyone) might be able to put to use in
comprehending the world around us. Again, I must stress that I am not
proposing that what I have done represents a new wave that--if
followed--will show itself to be a magic wand that can transform the
classroom into a place of inquiry rather than of top-down learning,
though that is my own personal goal, one that transcends this discussion
of media literacy.
The tool was immediately useful in my classes at Hitotsubashi University,
where I was free to create my own courses, and two that I set up made
extensive use of the web site. One was ?gAlternative Media?h, where the
objective is to examine non traditional sources of information in an
effort to discover if the mainstream media is fully and accurately
informing us.This provided an impetus for me to research (2) articles
that contrasted with what was being offered up on CNN or in most
corporate newspapers, being careful to choose sources that were
consistent and did not engage in wild, sensationalist reportage. Still,
I stressed to my students that while I felt they should be highly
skeptical of anything they read in the mainstream newspapers, they
should take the same attitude toward anything they found on my website.
(2) [Link 9: Alternative Sources of News and Media Criticism]
I also did not hide the fact that most of the information on my site was
left-of-center. While there are probably many teachers who assume that
straight news should be unbiased, the reality is quite different. A few
examples should suffice to demonstrate this. One is a recent CNN
memorandum urging reporters not to stress the extent of casualties
suffered by civilians in Afghanistan, which resulted in any reports of
such incidents being immediately followed by scenes of the World Trade
Center devastation, even though that event had taken place 6 weeks
before. It should further be noted that the practice has been especially
prevalent in the U.S., while International editions of CNN have been
decidedly more neutral (although terms such as ?gthe War on Terror,?h
used to advertise their coverage, can arguably be described as biased
and somewhat inaccurate as well). This is documented in link 9, as is
the case of the BBC, which in August instructed its reporters to use the
term ?gtargeted killings?h rather than ?g assassination?h according to
reports in the Jerusalem Post and other sources when referring to
actions carried out by the Israeli government against Palestinians.
While much of the political right in the United States, for example,
likes to talk about the ?gleft-liberal?h bias of the press, there is
much evidence to show a distinct rightwing bias. It should not, in any
case, be a surprise that the corporate media is not a neutral source of
information. During the Vietnam war, for example, one had to turn to the
French wire services in order to get beyond the propaganda emanating
from the U.S. networks, which dutifully reported the body counts
supplied by the U.S. Department of Defense. My objective, then, is to
give students the tools to determine for themselves what is happening in
the world in order for them to be more fully informed, and it is up to
them--as it is with any of us--to make up their own minds.
Beyond Alternative Media Classes
In my Alternative Media class, the focus has been on analyzing the news,
looking for examples of bias, seeking to clarify how the news media
helps to shape (or, more often, prevent) debate, but my attempts to
document issues that the mainstream media misses or under-reports have
been put to use at the International Education Center where my
traditional newspaper reading courses have also benefited from students
having an alternative to what they can find in the mainstream papers. TV
news classes have been more of a problem, as it is difficult to come by
alternative sources, though they do exist. In any case, where possible, I am
able to refer students to print sources that provide a counter-balance
to what is said in the news reports we show in the TV news classes. On the
other hand, documentaries are available from a number of sources, such
as one by the MaryKnoll Sisters narrated by actress Susan Sarandon on
the School of the Americas (see link 9) and its role it training
terrorists, which contradicts the claim that the U.S. leads the fight
against terrorism.
I have found my students, when offered the chance to examine these
alternative sources, will sometimes stick with mainstream sources for a
number of reasons, one being that the alternative sources can be more
complex. Still, in any class, there are students who DO choose these
sources, and their summaries to the rest of the class make it clear that
there is more than one view out there on any given issue and that, if
they are moved to do so, they can seek out the truth for themselves. For
that reason, I make Japanese sources of information available as well. In
recent months, my site has benefited from contributions by students and
others who have accessed my site and suggested such sources, some of
which can be categorized as alternative media and some of which are more
in the realm of grass roots organizations dealing with such issues as
capital punishment or the Mad Cow problem. As well, I have been approached
by readers (students, a former Air-Force member, teachers, and ordinary mortals)
asking for information, or looking for ways to take part in activism), and students
have undertaken their own research.
Debate
Beyond the problem of access to information and forming opinions, I
would like to say a few things about a popular means of getting students
to talk about the world in which we live. Debate fills a need in that it
allows students to discuss issues in a clear framework, though I am
careful to place emphasis not on winning or losing so much as presenting
valid arguments based on evidence. Clearly alternative media access is
of great use in providing students with arguments they might not
otherwise come into contact with.Judges are instructed to point out the
strengths and weakness of both sides, by the way, although they are free
to pretend they are neutral (assuming they are not neutral to start with)
and indicate which side has been more persuasive. This is a helpful
means of encouraging students to read more widely.
In the process of doing debate, I should point out that I have moved
gradually away from the basic form (Argument/Rebuttal/Counter-Rebuttal)
as this has, over time, shown itself to be unrealistic, a product of the
traditional logic/organization-based paradigm to which I refer above in
my comments on grammar composition. Such debates are artificial, in that
they assume that there are generally two opposing arguments and that one
of these must be shown to be superior to the other.
After I have the students try a traditional debate--in order to help them
formulate their arguments and anticipate counter-arguments--I move them
to various alternatives. One substitutes a ?ggive-and-take?h session for
the counter-rebuttal, so that they can experience going deeper into an
argument, although this carries the ?grisk?h of taking them off-topic. In
a give-and-take session, unlike the argument and rebuttal (which are
separated by breaks), the students instantly make counter-rebuttals and
counter-counter-rebuttals and are encouraged NOT to wait politely until
the other side has finished making its point.
In this way, debate becomes not an end in itself but more a vehicle that
helps facilitate discussion, where the conclusion is replaced by
realization that many issues are too complex to be neatly pigeonholed as
?gpro?h or ?gcon?h.But this is not the last stop. Over time it becomes
obvious that two sides can have seemingly similar viewpoints for quite
different reasons.Therefore, one can oppose the presence of U.S. troops
in Japan from both a leftwing and rightwing standpoint. One might seek
to abolish the military and militarism while the other side might want
to give a greater role to the Self Defense Forces, though in a
traditional debate on whether U.S. troops should be removed from Okinawa,
people holding both these views could find themselves on the same side.
That is why I then move students to a third form of debate that is even
closer to discussion, while still maintaining a debate framework so as
to encourage better preparation and to help them anticipate
counter-arguments. In this version of debate, there are no
sides. Students prepare, as they do in the other types of debate, in
small groups prior to the actual debate. Yet unlike the other debates,
students are not put into pro and con preparation groups.They are simply
asked to form groups randomly to go over what they know, what they have
read, and what the arguments are likely to be. If these preparatory
discussions turn into informal debates, that is fine, since the purpose
is to help them clarify their ideas, turning the preparatory sessions
into a form of practice. Later, new groups are formed, and students are
asked to persuade each other to modify their views. In other words, there
are no sides. Students will find that there are degrees of being pro and
con, and their job is to clarify what action they favor and try to get
others to see things their way. The test of this is to simply go around
at the end and ask them if they found the others?farguments persuasive.
Aleternative media access plays an important role here as students are
encouraged to read more widely on an issue and to draw parallels to
other issues that may be related. Wheras most debates which make use of information available
in the mainstream media are limited by the dearth of fact and analysis one finds in
the coporate media, there is a wealth of information in the alternative media,
and this has generally served to make these modified forms of debate more interesting.
Resources
Let me again stress that I am not offering anything new, but simply
showing how one teacher has dealt with (1) the conviction that real
world issues are an important element in promoting critical thinking in
language learning and (2) the realization that much of conventional news
coverage is slanted in ways that can easily subvert our attempts to
engender critical thinking and foster informed discussion. Over time, my
web site has become a forum for cross fertilization of ideas by
participants, who range from students to teachers to people who have
just stopped by out of nowhere.I hope that it can become more so, and I
invite you to visit, or send me email suggesting ways that we might be
able to collaborate.
Lastly, I would like to remind people of the recently created mailing list,
which can be used for further collaboration or sharing of resources. If any of
you are interested in having your OWN space for a web site, please feel
free to get in touch with me. TokyoProgressive is able to offer a limited
number of free web sites and email accounts to teachers (and students)
wishing to use them for similiar projects. Please email me with any requests
and I will get back to you. I would also welcome any inquiries about doing
some sort of joint presentation on alternative media.
Paul Arenson
Tokyo
November 2001
Media Literacy Links for
Teaching for Critical Media Literacy (PART II)
Paul Arenson
JALT Conference, Friday, 23 November; Room 21B;
13:30-13:55:00; Short Paper
Link 1: Early educational influences
Link 2: Two of the schools at which I teach
Link 3: How to contact me/Mailing list
Link 4: Korean residents in Japan
Link 5: Where I grew up
Link 6: Bush's war on terrorism
Link 7: Progressive Japanese teachers group
Link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
Link 9: Sample links
[link 1] References for The Silent Way (1) and The Silent Way (2), Community Language Learning and
Bill Bernhardt.These are for reference only. I am not necessarily endorsing them, though they did have an
early influence on my classroom approach.
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link 2] International Education Center and Hitotsubashi University, two of the schools at which I teach.
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link 3] Email me at paul@tokyoprogressive.org or at the following address:
http://www.gn.apc.org/tokyoprogressive/eric/pagecont/index2.files/bmblogin2.html
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link4] See here for some background on Koreans in Japan
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link 5] Ozone Park is a hop, skip and a jump from the site of a racist murder, Howard Beach.
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link 6] An article from my newsletter on Bush's "War Against Terrorism" and Japan
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link 7] Here is one very good group of teachers I have known for many years. Some of my ideas on introducing
global education and alternative media came from teachers I met through Shin Eiken. In years past, some teachers
seemed to be doing lessons which were too broad. For example, lessons on peace did not provide enough critical
context, or teachers simply assigned peace activities without trying to help students develop a sense of skepticism
and the ability to think for themselves. A look at one their recent pages on goals, however, does indicate they have
moved in a direction that goes beyond content, taking into account methodology as well as learner autonomy.
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
[link 8} What is alternative? To answer that we need to understand what is mainstream about the media.
Here are some excerpts from texts that help provide a framework for understanding what makes media
mainstream or alternative.
Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Pantheon Books, 1988
All The News Fit To Print by Edward S. Herman in Z magazine, 1998
How The New York Times Protects Indonesian Terror In East Timor by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson in Z magazine, 1999
Key Words in the New World Order: Words that Purr and Snarl by Edward S. Herman in Z Magazine, 2000
All The News Fit To Print, Part II by Edward S. Herman in Z magazine, May 1998
All The News Fit To Print (Part III): The Vietnam War and the myth of a liberal media by Edward S. Herman in Z magazine, October 1998
The NATO-Media Lie Machine: ?gGenocide?h in Kosovo? by Edward S. Herman & David Peterson
What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream by Noam Chomsky, from a talk at Z Media Institute June 1997
Freeing the Media: The Exception to the Rulers-A Talk Given at the Z Media Institute by Amy Goodman in October 1997
Media Literacy by Cynthia Peters (February 1998) on ZNet
If you came from the presentation, this will take you back there.
If you came from the Link Table of Contents, you will be returned there.
Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Pantheon Books, 1988
This excerpt is from Third World Traveler:
In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state
bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented
by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of
a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system
at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent.
This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically
attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and
aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the
general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed
in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the
huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access
to a private media system and on its behavior and performance." A
propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its
multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the
routes 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. The
essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters,"
fall under the following headings: (I) the size, concentrated ownership,
owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms;
(2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the
reliance of the media on information provided by government, business,
and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of
power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5)
"anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These
elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of
news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed
residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and
interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first
place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to
propaganda campaigns.
This is another excerpt from the same article.
In the case of the Vietnam War as well ... even those who condemn the
media for their alleged adversarial stance acknowledge that they were
almost universally supportive of U.S. policy until after large numbers
of U.S. troops had been engaged in the "intervention" in South Vietnam,
heavy casualties had been taken, huge dollar sums had been spent, and
elite protest had surfaced on grounds of threats to elite interests.
Only then did elements of the media undertake qualified reassessments of
the "cost-benefit" trade-off. But during the period of growing
involvement that eventually made extrication difficult, the watchdog
actually encouraged the burglar to make himself at home in a distant
land, and to bomb and destroy it with abandon.
The U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of
a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit-indeed, encourage spirited
debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully
within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an
elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely
without awareness. No one instructed the media to focus on Cambodia and
ignore East Timor. They gravitated naturally to the Khmer Rouge and
discussed them freely-just as they naturally suppressed information on
Indonesian atrocities in East Timor and U.S. responsibility for the
aggression and massacres. In the process, the media provided neither
facts nor analyses that would have enabled the public to understand the
issues or the bases of government policies toward Cambodia and Timor,
and they thereby assured that the public could not exert any meaningful
influence on the decisions that were made. This is quite typical of the
actual "societal purpose" of the media on matters that are of
significance for established power; not "enabling the public to assert
meaningful control over the political process," but rather averting any
such danger. In these cases, as in numerous others, the public was
managed and mobilized from above, by means of the media's highly
selective messages and evasions.
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
All The News Fit To Print by Edward S. Herman in Z magazine, 1998
The Times has not been "fearless," even in the face of gross outrages
against law, morality, and the general interest. During the McCarthy era,
for example, the management buckled under to the Eastland Committee by
firing former communist employees, who spoke freely to management but
would not inform on others, and more generally it failed to oppose the
witch hunt with vigor and on the basis of principle. An editorial of
August 6, 1948, attacking the use of the Fifth Amendment before the
House Committee on Unamerican Activities, was written by the publisher,
Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Among other cases, the paper did not oppose the Vietnam War till late in
the game, and then on grounds of unwinnability and excessive cost to us;
it failed to oppose the U.S. sponsorship of a system of National
Security States in Latin America, or the Central America wars, and
protected these murderous enterprises by eye aversion and biased
reporting. Even Reagan's "supply side economics" was treated gently by
the editors ("No one else has yet offered an option half so grand for
dealing with stagflation," ea., March 17, 1981), and the paper's top
reporter, James Reston, stated, falsely, that Reaganomics involved "a
serious attempt...to spread the sacrifices equally among all segments of
society" (February 22, 1981). The Times played a supportive propaganda
role in the huge Carter-Reagan era military buildup to contest the
inflated Soviet Threat; and its highly favorable review of The Bell
Curve, and more recent extensive publicity given the Thernstroms, have
been notable contributions to the ongoing assault on affirmative action.
Ralph Nader asserted in 1993 that Rosenthal "did more to damage
consumer causes than any other person in the United States," as the
Times's lead in downgrading consumer issues was followed by the
Washington Post and then by the rest of the press. Nader says that more
than a dozen Times reporters complained to him that they were pushed
away from "hot-potato areas into soft consumer advice or other
non-consumer assignments." The Times was late on many key business
stories, like the S&L scandals, the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International case, the mid-1980s phony liability crisis contrived by
the insurance industry, the misrepresentations of the Bush Task Force
on Regulatory Relief, and others. Reporters told Nader that "New York
doesn't like these stories," or that they must get company responses to
charges against them-and as Nader notes, the companies learned "simply
not to return calls, knowing that that tactic would block the story
deadline. These companies know about Rosenthal too.
Times officials and reporters have other (nonbusiness) ties to the elite
that make a class and establishment bias inevitable and natural. In his
gentle history of the Times, Without Fear or Favor, veteran Times
reporter Harrison Salisbury points out that the paper was dominated in
the post World War II era by men "of the same social and geographic
circle,..[who] had gone, by and large, to the same schools, Groton,
again and again, Groton; they had married into each others families;
they were Yale and Harvard and Princeton," etc. They were lawyers,
bankers, businesspeople and journalists; and many were notables in the
CIA and other parts of the government. These friends had "a common view
of the world, the role of the United States, the nature of the communist
peril."
Salisbury devotes many pages to the CIA-Times connection, questioning
but not disproving the claim by Carl Bernstein in Rolling Stone in 1977
that Cyrus Sulzberger, the Times's long-time chief European
correspondent, was a knowing CIA "asset," and that the paper gave cover
to some ten CIA agents from 1950-1966. Salisbury supplies an impressive
list of CIA people-Allen Dulles, James Angleton, Frank Wisner, Kim
Roosevelt, Richard Helms, and others, who were good friends of, and
wined, dined, and vacationed with, a large array of Times officials and
reporters. He acknowledges that in the early years there had been a
"relationship of cooperation between The Times and the Agency, a
relationship of trust between the CIA and Times correspondents,.."
(quoting CIA official Cord Meyer) and that friendly connections
persisted thereafter. When the Times published a series on the CIA in
1966, it gave a draft to former CIA chief John McCone for prior review,
an action that Salisbury felt entirely without significance, as McCone's
reactions could be accepted or ignored by the paper. But Salisbury
misses the possibility that the willingness to bring McCone into the
editorial process might reflect the limited framework and
non-threatening character of the Times's effort.
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
How The New York Times Protects Indonesian Terror In East Timor by Edward S.
Herman and David Peterson in Z magazine, 1999
Suharto stands alone as the world's only known triple-genocidist,
responsible for perhaps a million deaths in Indonesia (1965-1966),
200,000--a quarter or more of the population--in East Timor (1975-1999),
and tens of thousands in West Papua, which shares a common border with
the Irian Jaya province of Indonesia (1965-1999). But as his military
regime and New Order moved Indonesia from Sukarno's policy of
non-alignment to fervent (and murderous) anti-communism and opened his
country's doors to transnational corporate investment--even if at a
steep bribe entry price--the West has not only protected this premier
human rights violator, it has given him tens of billions of dollars in
economic and military aid.
With the U.S. establishment enthused over the Indonesian
counterrevolution of 1965-1966 and its deadly results, the mainstream
U.S. media also greeted these developments as a "gleam of light" (James
Reston) and "positive achievement" (C.L. Sulzberger), and media
suppressions and apologetics remained in close alignment with the West's
support of the dictatorship up to Suharto's ouster. The media's
treatment of the invasion, occupation, and mass killing in East Timor
from April 1975 onward has fit this pattern of protection of a favored
regime very closely.
New York Times reporters, for example, have always relied heavily on
Indonesian officials for information on East Timor, and treated that
information source with great gullibility (see the accompanying Appendix).
Thus, from 1975 to the present day these reporters have spoken of the
1975 Indonesian invasion as an intervention in a civil war, when in fact
the very brief civil war had ended by August 1975 with a Fretilin
victory, and was over long before the invaders landed.
From 1975 to the present Times reporters have also regularly called the
East Timorese resistance fighters "separatists" even though the
Indonesian incorporation of East Timor as a province has never been
accepted by either the indigenous people or the United Nations. This of
course follows the State Department line that we must accept
"reality"--that "the reality [is] that Indonesia has possessed East
Timor since 1975 and will not relinquish it" (as the State Department
explained in 1992).
Times reporters have also repeatedly pretended that some kind of
equivalence exists between the violence of the Timorese resistance and
that of the Indonesian invaders, and in sharp contrast with their
finding of Cambodian deaths in the years 1975-1978 to be the specific
responsibility of Pol Pot, they have consistently failed to identify the
source of the 200,000 East Timorese deaths since 1975. In a further
notable mark of apologetics, Times reporters have also taken at face
value a stream of expressions of regrets for violence and promises of
reform by the Indonesian invaders.
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
Key Words in the New World Order: Words that Purr and Snarl by Edward S.
Herman in Z Magazine, 2000
As the 21st century begins, with the U.S. hegemony and transnational
capitalism roaming the earth like the dinosaurs of the distant past, we
should take stock of the key words that help rationalize their rampages.
Many are heart-warming ?gpurr?h words like ?gdemocracy,?h ?gempowerment,?h
?gfreedom,?h ?greform,?h and ?gresponsibility,?h which are applied to
arrangements and policies that are antidemocratic, disempower, diminish
freedom, and abandon responsibility on the part of the rulers of the New
World Order (NWO). But the word usage is effective because the rulers
dominate the communications system and are free to reengineer meaning
and rewrite history.
These words are linked together, and they serve as important components
of an ideological and propaganda apparatus. It will be seen below that
the language of economics?market, commodities, commodification, free
trade, growth?flows smoothly into political lingo?freedom, democracy,
elections, reform, deregulation?and into the key words relating to
personal behavior and social issues?consumption, compassion, morality,
family values, law and order, crime, prisons?and also into the language
of global expansion and the maintenance of global law and order (?g
stability?h)?free trade, globalization, security, ethnic cleansing,
human rights, and humanitarian intervention. ?gFree trade?h sits astride
both the language of economics and that of global issues of expansion,
and so do other words in this evolving system.
Humanitarian Intervention
In NWO ideology globalization is portrayed as technologically driven,
inevitable, and beneficial to all but a few ?gspecial interests. But
globalization runs into difficulties with ?grogues?h and others who fail
to appreciate its wonders. The ongoing global polarization of incomes,
the widespread ethnic conflict, and the growth of ?gchaotic ungovernable
entities?h are not seen as a product of globalization (which they are in
considerable measure) but as fortuitous happenings that interfere with
the wondrous process. As in the case of Russian ?greform,?h the answer
to seriously negative consequences is an intensification of their causes.
As with crime in the streets at home, the cure is not in altering the
workings of the economy serving the elite so well, it is in prisons at
home and putting the rogues in their place abroad.
This gears well with domestic policy, where ?gmilitary Keynesianism?h
has long been the acceptable base of macro-stabilization and Pentagon
subsidization of high tech industry the acceptable form of welfare. It
is also useful to have a large military establishment available to keep
the lid on any future internal security threats. Furthermore, as
Thorstein Veblen pointed out back in 1904, a militarized society not
only conduces to ?gthe orderly pursuit of business,?h it ?gdirects the
popular interest to other, nobler, institutionally less hazardous
matters than the unequal distribution of wealth or of creature comforts,
?h and affords ?ga corrective for ?esocial unrest?f and similar
disorders of civilized life.?h
Nice little wars against rogues bring us together (around our TV sets,
as in watching the Super Bowl), demonstrate our high moral virtue in
willingness to prevent ?gethnic cleansing?h with ?ghumanitarian bombing,
?h and demonstrate to the rest of the world that we are the fit
policepeople of the globalization process from which almost everybody
benefits. Of course, when it gets to the condition of the Kurds in
Turkey and the East Timorese under Indonesian assault, we must recognize
that we ?gcan?ft do everything,?h and that there are cases where ?g
constructive engagement?h is more helpful than threats and the use of
force. But otherwise, this is clearly the best of all possible worlds.
"
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
All The News Fit To Print, Part II by Edward S. Herman in Z magazine, May 1998
The New York Times is a strongly logical paper, whose biases and
frequent propaganda service give its logo phrase "all the news that's
fit to print" an ironical twist. James Reston acknowledged that "we left
[out] a great deal of what we knew about U.S. intervention in Guatemala
and in a variety of other cases" at government request or for political
reasons satisfactory to the editors. The government lied, but the Times
published their claims even though the "Times knew the statements were
not true"(Salisbury). Strategic silences, the transmitting of false or
misleading information, the failure to provide relevant context, the
acceptance and dissemination of myths, the application of double
standards as virtual standard operating procedure, and participation in
ideological bandwagons and campaigns, have been extremely important in
Times coverage of foreign affairs. Obviously the Times is not merely a
biased instrument of propaganda. It does many things well and its
reporters often produce high quality journalism. This is especially true
where the paper's editorial slant on issues ("policy") and ideological
biases are not at stake and where major advertisers are not threatened.
In those sensitive areas (some described below), critical and probing
articles are hardly more common than dogs walking on their hind legs.
Furthermore, the paper's reporters are frequently "generalists" moving
from field to field, country to country, who must make up for being out
of their depth by glibness, a reliance on familiar (and English-speaking)
sources, and an ideological conformity that will meet "New York"
standards.
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
All The News Fit To Print (Part III): The Vietnam War and the myth of a liberal media by Edward S.
Herman in Z magazine, October 1998
It is part of conservative mythology that the mainstream media,
especially the New York Times, opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and,
effectively "lost the war." Liberals, on the other hand, while often
agreeing that the press opposed the war, regard this as a display of the
media at its best, pursuing its proper critical role. But they are both
wrong: conservatives, because they identify any reporting of unhelpful
facts as "adversarial" and want the media to serve as crude propaganda
agencies of the state; liberals, because they fail to see how massively
the mainstream media serve the state by accepting the assumptions and
frameworks of state policy, transmitting vast amounts of state
propaganda, and confining criticism to matters of tactics while
excluding criticism of premises and intentions.
In his Without Fear Or Favor, Harrison Salisbury acknowledged that in
1962 the Times was "deeply and consistently" supportive of the war
policy. He also admitted that the paper was taken in by the Johnson
administration's lies on the 1964 Bay of Tonkin incident that impelled
Congress to give Johnson a blank check to make war. Salisbury claims,
however, that in 1965 the Times began to question the war and moved into
an increasingly oppositional stance, culminating in the publication of
the Pentagon Papers in 1971. While there is some truth in Salisbury's
portrayal, it is misleading in important respects. For one thing, from
1954 to the present, the Times never abandoned the framework and
language of apologetics, according to which the U.S. was resisting
somebody else's aggression and protecting "South Vietnam." The paper
never used the word "aggression" to describe the U.S. invasion of
Vietnam, but applied it freely with respect to North Vietnam. Its
supposedly liberal and "adversarial" reporters like David Halberstam and
Homer Bigart referred to NLF actions as "subversion" and the forced
relocation of peasants as "humane" and "better protection against the
Communists."
The liberal columnist Tom Wicker referred to President
Johnson's decision to "step up resistance to Vietcong infiltration in
South Vietnam." The Vietcong "infiltrate" in their own country while the
U.S. "resists." Wicker also accepted without question that we were
"invited in" by a presumably legitimate government, and James Reston, in
the very period when the U.S. was refusing all negotiation in favor of
military escalation to compel enemy surrender, declared that we were in
Vietnam in accord with "the guiding principle of American foreign
policy...that no state shall use military force or the threat of
military force to achieve its political objectives." In short, for all
these Times writers the patriotic double standard was internalized, and
any oppositional tendency was fatally compromised by acceptance of the
legitimacy of U.S. intervention, which limited their questioning to matters of tactics
and costs. Furthermore, although from 1965 onward the Times was willing
to publish more information that put the war in a less favorable light,
it never broke from its heavy dependence on official sources or its
reluctance to check out official lies or explore the damage being
wrought by the U.S. war machine. In contrast with its eager pursuit of
refugees from the Khmer Rouge after April 1975, the paper rarely sought
out testimony from the millions of Vietnamese refugees from U.S. bombing
and chemical war-fare. In its opinion columns as well, the new openness
was towards those commentators who accepted the premises of the war and
would limit their criticisms to its tactical problems and costs to us.
From beginning to end, those who criticized the war as aggression and
immoral at its root were excluded from the debate.
In October 1972 an agreement was reached
between the Nixon administration and Hanoi that would have ended the war
on terms similar to those the U.S. had rejected in 1964, with the NLF
and Saigon government both recognized in the South and an electoral
contest to follow. The U.S., however, following the heaviest bombing
attacks in history on Hanoi in December 1972, proceeded to reinterpret
the agreement as leaving the South to the exclusive control of its
client, in contradiction of the clear language of the document. The
Times, along with the rest of the mainstream media, accepted the Nixon
administration's reinterpretion without question, and continued
thereafter to repeat this false version and to cite the incident as "a
case study of how an agreement with ambiguous provisions could be
exploited and even ignored by a Communist government" (Neil Lewis,
August 18, 1987).
Postwar Imperial Apologetics After the Vietnam War ended, and during
the ensuing 18 years of U.S. economic warfare against the newly
independent Vietnam, the Times' adherence to the traditional and
official viewpoints never wavered. That the U.S. was guilty of
aggression has never been hinted at; the U.S. fought to protect "South
Vietnam." In 1985 the editors chided public ignorance of history,
evidenced by the fact that only 60 percent knew that this country had
"sided with South Vietnam"-a creation of the U.S. with no legal basis or
indigenous support, but legitimized for the Times because it was
official doctrine. In reconstructing imperial ideology it was also
important that-the enormous damage inflicted on the land and people of
Vietnam by this country be downplayed and that the Vietnamese now in
command be put in an unfavorable light. The Times accommodated by giving
the damage minimal attention and by consistently attributing the
difficulties of the smashed (and then boycotted) country to communist
mismanagement. While featuring selected refugees who presented the most
gruesome stories and blamed the communists, the Times repeatedly sneered
at the "bitter and inescapable ironies...for those who opposed the war"
and who had "looked to the communists as saviors of the unhappy land"
(ed, March 21, 1977). This not only implicitly denied U.S.
responsibility for the unhappiness, but misrepresented the position of
most antiwar activists, who did not look on the Communists as saviors,
but objected to the murderous aggression designed to deny their rule,
which the Times supported.
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
The NATO-Media Lie Machine: ?gGenocide?h in Kosovo? by Edward S. Herman & David Peterson
Media & Left NATO Propaganda
Having encouraged the disintegration of Yugoslavia from 1991, and
actually obstructed peaceful solutions to the problem of protecting
minorities in breakaway states, the policies of Germany and the United
States in particular assured ethnic violence. Their chosen villain was
Serbia, and an intense official and media focus on Serb crimes followed.
This involved not only selectivity of outrage and a misreading of causes
and locus of responsibility, but also a demonization process helped
along by the one-sided, ahistorical portrayal of events frequently
infused with disinformation (as in the British news station ITN?fs
fabrication of a ?gdeath?h or ?gconcentration?h camp at the Trnopolje
refugee center in 1992; see Thomas Deichmann, ?gThe Picture That Fooled
the World,?h Living Marxism, Feb. 1997).
Demonization and the continuous purveying of atrocity news created a
moral environment receptive to charges of genocide. This reached deeply
into the liberal and left communities and media, with many liberals or
leftists passionate supporters of ?gdoing something,?h including the
NATO bombing war. This was to be expected of the New Republic, where the
notion of collective Serb guilt a la Daniel Jonah Goldhagen?fs Hitler?fs
Willing Executioners, conveniently justifying attacking Serbian civil
society and committing war crimes, found a happy home. (Stacy Sullivan,
?gMilosevic?fs Willing Executioners,?h New Republic, May 10, 1999). But
it also affected the Nation, whose UN Correspondent Ian Williams was
pleased to see the UN bypassed in the interest of humanitarian bombing
(April 2, 1999), and where Kai Bird (June 14, 1999) and Christopher
Hitchens (November 29, 1999, among others) both found Serb behavior ?g
genocidal?h in the course of their quasi-defenses of NATO policy. Only
Hitchens seemed to suggest that the Serbs were trying to exterminate a
people (based on ludicrous arguments; see Herman, ?gHitchens on Serbia
and East Timor,?h Z Magazine, April 1999).
In the mainstream media, genocide was used even more lavishly and
uncritically. Often it was presented in the form of assertions by
officials, with numbers like Cohen?fs 100,000, but reporters or
commentators rarely if ever challenged the figures or questioned whether
the actions designated as genocidal were intended to exterminate a
people. It was rare indeed to mention the difference between trains to
Auschwitz and to the Albanian border, as did Julie Churchill in the
Guardian.
Genocide was used as a symbol of aversion and disapproval, justifying
extreme measures against the ?gdictator?h and his people?the media felt
impelled to call Milosevic a ?gdictator?h even though this put a crimp
in condemning ?gordinary Serbs?h as responsible for his actions, but
they managed to do both at the same time (Anthony Lewis, ?gThe Question
of Evil,?h NYT, June 22, 1999). Some commentators were carried away by
their own passion, David Rieff, a New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
and Chistopher Hitchens favorite, asserting that ?gthe Milosevic regime
was trying to eradicate an entire people?h (?gWars Without End?,?h NYT,
September 23, 1999). But most commentators were satisfied with using the
word without getting specific as to meaning or providing facts. They
never acknowledged any military rationale to the post-bombing expulsions
and killings: it was evil people doing evil things for evil reasons.
In a masterpiece of the NATO anti-genocide apologetics genre, the New
York Times provided Sebastian Junger?fs ?gA Different Kind of Killing?h
(NYT Magazine, February 27, 2000), where it is explained that even if
the number of bodies found in Kosovo were not of genocidal scope and
some stories turned out to be untrue, nevertheless ?gA single murder can
be considered an act of genocide if it can be shown that there was an
intent to kill everyone else in that person?fs group.?h Junger then
recounts his visit to the site of an unclaimed body of a teenage woman,
allegedly kidnapped, raped, and killed by Serbian ?girregular forces.?h
Junger then says that, ?git was not until this century that a mechanized
army carried out such crimes in the service of its government. That is
genocide; the rest is just violence.?h Junger makes not the slightest
effort to show that the ?girregular forces?h had done this as part of a
government plan and ?gin the service of its government?h rather than on
their own, or that the KLA or U.S. army didn?ft carry out similar acts.
In short, this is completely worthless nonsense?but it pins the word
genocide on the official enemy, and therefore the New York Times allows
this travesty to appear in its sunday magazine.
Some Comparative Data
We can also measure the spectacular politicization of the word genocide
by comparing its lavish use in describing Serb conduct in Kosovo with
its minimal use for Turkey?fs treatment of its Kurds in the 1990s
(indeed, for decades) and Indonesia?fs treatment of East Timorese in
1999 as well as in earlier years. The force of this comparison is
strengthened by the facts that Turkey killed far more Kurds in the 1990s
than the Serbs killed Albanians in Kosovo, not only before the bombing
(whose number presumably elicited the ?ghumanitarian?h intervention) but
even including those killed during the 78-day bombing and war (see
Chomsky?fs New Military Humanism). Indonesia?fs invasion-occupation led
to the death of almost a third of the East Timor population (1975-1980),
and Indonesia was subsequently responsible for the 1998-1999 slaughter
and expulsion of a still untold number of East Timorese associated with
a UN-sponsored election. The number of East Timorese killed in this
latest round of Indonesian terror far exceeded the pre-bombing total of
Kosovo Albanian victims?estimates run from 3,000-6,000 killed even
before the August 30, 1999 referendum unleashed unrestrained Indonesian
destruction and murder?and the grand total for 1999 is surely far larger
than the overall total of Kosovo Albanians killed by the Serbs in 1998
and 1999.
But as Turkey and Indonesia are clients of the United States and the
recipients of aid, military supplies, and diplomatic support from the
United States, Britain, and the Western powers generally, their human
rights crimes are never referred to by Western officials as genocide. In
fact, in a droll feature of the NATO campaign against Serb genocide in
Kosovo, Turkey, a member of NATO, took part in the war against
Yugoslavia with direct bombing missions and the provision of bases for
flights of other NATO powers, perhaps generously reallocating its own
forces from the ethnic cleansing of Kurds to?ghumanitarian?h NATO
service.
Given this warm relationship between the NATO powers and Turkey and
Indonesia, we would expect the NATO media to follow in the footsteps of
their leaders and treat Turkey and Indonesia kindly, refraining from
serious investigative effort and the enthusiastic searches for ?gmass
graves?h they pursued in Kosovo, and avoiding the use of an invidious
word like genocide in reference to these client states, no matter how
applicable and inconsistent with their usage of the word as regards
Serbia. This expectation is fully realized.
We will limit ourselves here to usage in the New York Times, although we
believe the findings applicable to the general run of mainstream media.
In the Times the bias is startling, and has some unexpected sidelights.
The accompanying table shows that in the year 1999, the word genocide
was ascribed to the Serbs in Kosovo in 85 different articles, including
15 that began on the front page, and in 16 editorials and op-ed columns.
In some of these articles the word was used repeatedly. (In one
remarkable example, during the current year and outside our sample
proper, Michael Ignatieff repeated the word genocide 11 times in a
single op-ed [February 13, 2000]).
By contrast, the word showed up in the Times in only 9 items referring
to East Timor in 1999, only once in an editorial or opinion piece, and
only 15 times for East Timor in the entire decade of the 1990s. The word
was never used in a front-page article during the 1990s. Furthermore, no
Times reporter or editorial writer ever used the word genocide in
application to East Timor over the entire period, 1975-1999. (That is to
say, in all instances where the word did appear, it did not express the
opinion of the Times writer, but was attributed to another source.)
Anthony Lewis, who repeatedly referred to Serb action as genocidal and
called for Western intervention there, spoke of ?ghuman rights abuses in
East Timor?h (July 12, 1993), but he never called it genocide or urged
intervention. Barbara Crossette repeatedly complimented Suharto for
bringing ?gstability?h to the region. In a notable mention of the word
genocide, veteran Times reporter Henry Kamm explicitly denied its
application to East Timor, calling such usage ?ghyperbole,?h and
allocating the mass deaths to ?gcruel warfare and the starvation that
accompanied it on this historically food-short island?h (February 15,
1981).
Equally remarkable, the table also shows that the word genocide was
never once used in application to Turkey and its treatment of its Kurds
in 1999, and was used only five times for such a relationship in the
decade of the 1990s, never in a front-page article. However, in a
wonderful illustration of how the Times follows the line of U.S. foreign
policy, the table shows that Iraq?fs mistreatment of its Kurds in the
years 1990-1999 was described as genocidal 22 times, in five cases in
front-page articles.
In short, only ?gworthy victims?h?that is, the victims of officially
designated enemies like Yugoslavia and Iraq?suffer from genocide; those
that are unworthy, like East Timorese and the Turkish Kurds, are merely
subject to ?gcruel warfare?h and adverse natural forces, as Henry Kamm
explained in regard to East Timor. So the Western media and ?g
international community?h will be mobilized on behalf of the former, and
the latter will be compelled to suffer in silence. But as we have
stressed, there never was genocide in Kosovo, so that the NATO war there
was based on a lie. And that lie, like the May 27 indictment of
Milosevic by the War Crimes Tribunal, served mainly to provide a moral
cover that allowed NATO to bomb the hostage population of Serbia into
submission. That population now joins Iraq?fs in being subject to
further ?gsanctions of mass destruction?h whose effects offer a much
closer fit to ?ggenocide?h than the Serb actions which, allegedly,
precipitated NATO?fs war.
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream by Noam Chomsky, from a talk at Z Media Institute June 1997
By Noam Chomsky
If you?fve read George Orwell?fs Animal Farm which he wrote in the
mid-1940s, it was a satire on the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state. It
was a big hit. Everybody loved it. Turns out he wrote an introduction to
Animal Farm which was suppressed. It only appeared 30 years later.
Someone had found it in his papers. The introduction to Animal Farm was
about "Literary Censorship in England" and what it says is that
obviously this book is ridiculing the Soviet Union and its totalitarian
structure. But he said England is not all that different. We don?ft have
the KGB on our neck, but the end result comes out pretty much the same.
People who have independent ideas or who think the wrong kind of
thoughts are cut out.
He talks a little, only two sentences, about the institutional structure.
He asks, why does this happen? Well, one, because the press is owned by
wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public. The
other thing he says is that when you go through the elite education
system, when you go through the proper schools in Oxford, you learn that
there are certain things it?fs not proper to say and there are certain
thoughts that are not proper to have. That is the socialization role of
elite institutions and if you don?ft adapt to that, you?fre usually out.
Those two sentences more or less tell the story.
When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony
Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite
correctly, "nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like.
All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I?f
m never under any pressure." Which is completely true, but the point is
that they wouldn?ft be there unless they had already demonstrated that
nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the
right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something,
and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it
to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is
mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines.
They have been through the socialization system.
Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect
the news to be like? Well, it?fs pretty obvious. Take the New York Times.
It?fs a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They
don?ft make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it
on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the
newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged
people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know,
top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product
to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other
businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they
are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations.
In the case of the elite media, it?fs big businesses.
Well, what do you expect to happen? What would you predict about the
nature of the media product, given that set of circumstances? What would
be the null hypothesis, the kind of conjecture that you?fd make assuming
nothing further. The obvious assumption is that the product of the media,
what appears, what doesn?ft appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect
the interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power
systems that are around them. If that wouldn?ft happen, it would be kind
of a miracle.
Okay, then comes the hard work. You ask, does it work the way you
predict? Well, you can judge for yourselves. There?fs lots of material
on this obvious hypothesis, which has been subjected to the hardest
tests anybody can think of, and still stands up remarkably well. You
virtually never find anything in the social sciences that so strongly
supports any conclusion, which is not a big surprise, because it would
be miraculous if it didn?ft hold up given the way the forces are
operating.
The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo.
If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere,
and you study journalism and communications or academic political
science, and so on, these questions are not likely to appear. That is,
the hypothesis that anyone would come across without even knowing
anything that is not allowed to be expressed, and the evidence bearing
on it cannot be discussed. Well, you predict that too. If you look at
the institutional structure, you would say, yeah, sure, that?fs got to
happen because why should these guys want to be exposed? Why should they
allow critical analysis of what they are up to take place? The answer is,
there is no reason why they should allow that and, in fact, they don?ft.
Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is just that you don?ft make
it to those positions. That includes the left (what is called the left),
as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately socialized and
trained so that there are some thoughts you just don?f t have, because
if you did have them, you wouldn?ft be there. So you have a second order
of prediction which is that the first order of prediction is not allowed
into the discussion.
The last thing to look at is the doctrinal framework in which this
proceeds. Do people at high levels in the information system, including
the media and advertising and academic political science and so on, do
these people have a picture of what ought to happen when they are
writing for each other (not when they are making graduation speeches)?
When you make a commencement speech, it is pretty words and stuff. But
when they are writing for one another, what do people say about it?
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
Freeing the Media: The Exception to the Rulers-A Talk Given at the Z Media Institute
by Amy Goodman in October 1997
Excepted from the full article
Three years ago NPR commissioned Mumia to do a series of commentaries
not related to his case. When the editor left the prison she said that
these were some of the finest commentaries she had ever heard on any
subject. They were set to air. They promoted them heavily. Then the day
before they were scheduled to air the Fraternal Order of Police was
having a national meeting in DC. They put tremendous pressure on NPR not
to air these commentaries. NPR knew what they were doing. They had
promoted this heavily, they weighed whether to air this, but they just
could not take the heat. So they pulled the commentaries, saying they
weren?ft anything special. They put them in a vault. No other commentary
is possible now because of the crackdown on all prisoners in the
Pennsylvania system.
I am not sure why it is NPR won?ft release the Mumia tapes. Perhaps if
Mumia is executed they can have an exclusive airing of the only unaired
commentaries of Mumia Abu-Jamal. They say it is because the case is in
litigation. Mumia and the Prison Radio Project are suing NPR to release
these commentaries.
You see the kind of ripple effect that a cowardly act like NPR?fs has.
They set precedent three years ago and then they turn it into a
principle. Then you have smaller networks like Temple University Public
Radio Network citing NPR as the example of why they won?ft do it. Fewer
and fewer journalists will dare to do these kind of stories, they do not
want to be frozen out of the mainstream network of which NPR is very
much a part. Many now call NPR National Police Radio for what they have
done.
When we aired the Mumia commentaries we held a news conference at the
National Press Club. NPR would not comment, saying Mumia?fs case was in
litigation. Every death row prisoner?fs case is in litigation until they
are executed. Until it is resolved. So in saying they wouldn?ft cover it
until it was resolved, they are saying they are not going to cover the
case.
A few months ago NPR called poet Martin Espada and asked him to do a
series of poems to air as commentaries on "All Things Considered." So
Martin said great. He happened to be going to Philadelphia and he said
"hmm, what is on peoples minds in Philly." The one thing that came up
that was on everyone?fs mind was Mumia Abu-Jamal. So he wrote a poem
about that and faxed it in and he didn?ft get a call back. He couldn?ft
understand it. They had pursued him to get these poems and he thought it
was a very good poem. In the poem he talks about Walt Whitman, poetry,
Mumia, and the witnesses that were coming forward to say that they were
coerced by the police. It was done the way NPR wanted it: as poetry but
also dealing with the news of the day.
He finally called them and said "what?fs up." They said "no, we won?ft
be airing it." He said "but you asked me for a poem." NPR said "yes but
we can?f t do this poem." He said "Why can?ft you." They said "because
it deals with Mumia Abu-Jamal." He said "what are you talking about." He
was completely out of the loop when it came to "national police radio."
He said "wait a second. You?fre saying that you?fre not going to air
this for political reasons?" And they said "yes." They don?ft even cover
it up anymore. This is the arrogance of a very powerful corporate-
supported network.
"Democracy Now!" did an interview with Martin Espada talking about this
case. NPR said they had every right not to air his poetry. So they can
choose what voices are heard. Which is true of any outlet. But because
it is public we have more of a responsibility to protect the airwaves.
They are not Pacifica?fs, NPR?fs, ABC?fs, or NBC?fs. They are not owned
by these corporations. They are leased. They are public airwaves. We
should protect them and use them. It has always been my philosophy that
it is our job to go to where the silence is and say something. We are
not entertainers. We are reporters. We go to places that are unpopular.
We bring voices out that are unpopular. We are not here to run
popularity contests. We are here to cover the issues that we feel are
critical to a democratic society. We have to pressure the media, to
shame the media to go to these places where so many in certain
populations end up.
Press Briefings
I want to talk about going to press conferences of
President Clinton. Sometimes getting in a question there is even harder
than getting into a prison. I had been in Washington for the last year
covering the election and going to a lot of press briefings at the White
House. If you watch CSPAN or the news you might notice that Mike McCurry,
the White House press secretary, is asked a lot of questions but they
all seem to be of the same ilk. Why is it that when there are a lot of
journalists there, and you?fre always seeing people fighting to get a
question in?
Well, every day the White House press secretary has two meetings. I
haven?ft been to the first. I just learned about it. In the morning he
has something called a "gaggle," an off-the-record meeting with
reporters where they basically get the agenda straight for the day. I
don?ft think journalists should be meeting with these guys off the
record because it is their chance to spin the news, of course. You can
also say, based on those meetings, "a source said," and then you can
quote Mike McCurry in the next paragraph and it sounds like McCurry and
the source are agreeing, when it is the same person. It is a way for
those in power not to be accountable because they can put out anything
they want and they are simply a source. So, there is the gaggle in the
morning. In the afternoon there is the White House press briefing where
the White House journalists--these are the ones that hang out at the
White House all day; people like Wolf Blitzer and others from the
various networks--get the latest news that the White House wants to put
out. Now, think about who can be at the White House all day. Most news
organizations--certainly the smaller ones, the alternative ones, the
ethnic press, the nonprofit press--cannot afford to have a person sitting
at the White House all day because we have one person covering all of
Washington. So you end up with the most powerful corporate press being
the ones that are part of the "White House press corps."
Even when Clinton goes abroad, say, to Indonesia in 1994, and you go to
that press conference or you see it on TV you say "God, the same
questions are asked. Does every reporter in the world have the same
question? Display the same ignorance?" No, it is the same set of
reporters that travel with him everywhere.
This year when Clinton was holding a news conference after his
reelection, I tried to get into that press conference, as opposed to the
press briefings that I can go to every day. Although even in the press
briefings you see the gold plates on each of the chairs, The Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times. Pacifica doesn?ft have
one of those gold plates. I have to stand at the back of the room. Of
course someone is always absent, so I run to the front and sit down.
When it is really crowded I climb up on the camera ladders and hang
there so I can get my questions in. All this makes reporters from
smaller news outlets, from alternative news outlets, look a bit crazy.
Because you?fve got Andrea Mitchell and Wolf Blitzer in the front, they
spend their five minutes combing their hair, because they know the
camera is going to be on them. When the White House spokesperson or the
President is there, they say from the front row, calm and secure, "Mr.
President" and he says, without fear, "yes Wolf." Wolf asks his question,
no need to rush. He talks quietly and the President listens. You?fve got
me 20 rows back yelling "Mr. President," jumping up and down, wearing
the brightest colors you can wear. This is how it really works. You look
crazed, and you are by the time you get into one of these press
conferences.
I?fll give you an example of the first and last one I went to. July
Griffin, the Washington bureau chief at Pacifica, called to reserve me a
seat at Clinton?f s press conference. The White House liaison to the
press said, "I?fm sorry you won?ft be having a reserved seat, but we can
put you in the next room. Amy can watch it on TV." Now, I can stay at
home in New York and watch it on television. I do shout questions at him
from my TV, but that doesn?ft have much effect.
So, Julie said "No. She doesn?ft want to watch him on TV. She wants to
be, not only at the press conference, but in the front row.
The liaison said "Sorry, you can?ft be in the front row. That is
reserved for White House reporters."
Julie asked "Why is it reserved for a certain set of people?"
He responded, "Because they have a special relationship with the
President."
Well, clearly that is the special relationship we want to cover as media
critics, and that we feel has to be broken. The liaison finally said
"Don?ft take it up with me. Take it up with the heads of the White House
press corps."
Julie said "You mean we have to ask Westinghouse, GE, and Disney whether
Pacifica can be included in this news conference? I think we have the
answer."
So, I went to this press conference. We were led across the street to
the old executive office building. I was running as fast as I could. I
wanted to be the first person into the room. I raced up the stairs when
everyone else was taking the elevator. I went to the first row and there
were the name plates for Andrea, Wolf, etc. Then I went to where they
had just white pieces of paper with journalists names, about six rows
back. I could not find my name. I ended up viewing with the cameramen at
the back. Every time I poked my head up they would say "get down"
because I was in the way of the cameras.
That is the way it works. That is why it is so difficult to break
through this media blockade that is actually created by the media itself.
So, if you?fre wondering why the tough questions are not asked, this
explains it.
I have gotten a chance to ask a number of questions of Mike McCurry, and
also, at the State Department briefings, of Nicholas Burns. One the
questions I?fd been persuing is the issue of Indonesia and East Timor
before it became a major issue. I was pressing Mike McCurry as to why
President Clinton would be trying to sell F-16s to the Indonesian
dictatorship when you look at the genocide that is occurring in East
Timor, with a third of the population killed there. The first time I
asked a question along those lines, I had then walked out of the press
briefing and I heard one of the big journalists saying to another "Why
do they let people in like that?" Then I looked over and she said in
quizzical condescending fashion, "East Timor?"
I said "Yes. Would you like to know something about it. In fact, this
week is a particularly critical time."
Looking down her nose she said "No. I don?ft want to know about it."
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
Media Literacy by Cynthia Peters (February 1998) on ZNet
Excerpted from the full article
When my daughter came home from kindergarten telling me that her school
was teaching her about the media, advertising, and such things as toy
packaging, I was impressed. She was beginning to get the tools necessary
to think critically about the blizzard of advertising and commercialism
we confront everyday. It?fs always been clear that no matter how much
parents de-emphasize TV or avoid the malls and the Disney stores, kids
will be hit hard by the corporations that want them to consume their
products and their values. We can?ft protect kids from all the media
messages, but we can empower them to be critical. We can make them
"media literate," the goal, I discovered, of an important political
movement that has gained momentum in the last few years.
With programs sprouting all over the country, finding outlets in schools
and churches, the media literacy movement aims to equip children with
the skills they need to critically view commercials and be better
consumers. Some media literacy programs also teach children how to use
various mediums themselves. According to the Aspen Institute Leadership
Forum on Media Literacy (1992) and the Canadian Association for Media
Literacy, media literacy is the ability to "access, analyze, evaluate
and produce communication in a variety of forms."
Is this a long overdue anti-corporate critique of the media? Not exactly.
The people who preach media literacy hail from all over the political
spectrum. Their funding sources are everything from the Catholic Church
to Disney Corporation and MTV. They use media literacy as a tool to
counter whatever media messages they find particularly abhorrent or as a
neutral form of "education."
For the Right, there?fs too much emphasis on birth control,
homosexuality, and single motherhood on TV. For the Methodists, TV
violence stands in contrast to their biblical faith that "every person
whom we encounter is as precious as one created in the image of God."
For Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, teachers who
bring a media literacy curriculum into the classroom are doing nothing
less than "protecting the future of our country" by educating kids to
say no to smoking, drinking and marijuana use.
For liberals, advertising that does not deliver on its promise abridges
our rights as consumers. For grassroots organizations that put
communication tools directly into the hands of urban youth, for example,
media literacy helps young people "navigate modern times."
Almost no one wants to look at key questions of who owns and controls
the media. There is little attention to the profit-driven nature of our
economy and how that gives rise to a commercially driven media. With the
exception of organized religion, most of the media literacy movement
emphasizes awareness over social change, and places responsibility for
mediating the media squarely on the shoulders of parents and teachers,
and the children themselves. As several authors from the media center of
the Judge Baker Children?fs Center in Boston put it, "We need to teach
children how to watch television safely." [Boston Globe, December 14,
1997]
The media literacy movement has the potential to be an important
educational and social change tool. It should provide the opportunity to
educate children not just about deceptive toy packaging, but about where
we look, in this consumer culture, to get our needs met. We could be
investigating not just how well the doll?fs body-fluid mechanism works,
but how sexist toys demand certain kinds of play from girls. Beyond
being critical of the inane sit coms and troubling TV violence from the
broadcast world, we could investigate the industry more deeply and begin
to understand how, as a system, it is designed to produce shows that
deliver advertising. We could ask what sort of pressures are at work on
the TV producers given that they work in a monopolized, profit-driven
industry. We could ask how schools have come to deliver captive
audiences to the corporate world. The media literacy movement should
lead us to ask deep questions about the nature of our economy, the way
we get our needs met, and the way we experience culture. It should
persuade us that being knowledgeable about the media is not enough, that
being vigilant about our children?fs use of toys and TV is not enough,
and that joining forces to reform the worst of the industry is not
enough. The media literacy movement should not leave it to the Right and
organized religion to put forward alternative values to those delivered
by TV and consumer culture. "
Back to link 8: What is alternative media? What is mainstream media?
[link 9] Some alternative sources of news and media criticism are listed here. Scroll down to see all of them.
Terror/Afghanistan and other issues from FAIR and Institute for Public Accuracy
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Reporters Have to Press Harder About Afghanistan by Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
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AIDS controversies, Biotech Watch, GM Food
Food: (Cross referenced with Environment and./or Globalization): Food Standards, Food Safety, Food Quiz,
Alcohol, International Organizations, Antibiotics and food
Globalization, Economics and Business: Global Warming and Corporate Profit, No Logo--Naomi Klein,
Mad Cow in Japan--Coverup?, Ajinomoto and Other Corporate Criminals, Ralph Nadar:
Tokaimura and Brit-Rail Accident Both Caused by Privatisation, AIDS and
South Africa, Gore and Big Business,Chomsky-Privatising Education, Vijay
Prashad-Indian Workers Fight Pepsi Cola, Chomsky- Forgiving World Bank
and IMF Loans: Why?,Patrick Bond-Zimbabwe's Crisis Showcases Reasons for
Bank/IMF Protest, IMF and WTO Killing Kids in the Name of "Free Trade",
Cancel Third World Debt, MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment):
U.S. media Fails to Inform Public on Dangerous Plan, Hahnel- Fighting
Corporate Sponsored Globalization, Sonia Shah-Our Deeply Twisted
Understanding Of the World, Hahnel-The Right and Wrong Reasons for
Opposing China's Entry into the WTO, The APEC Meeting: Property Rights
Over Human Rights -Again, Weisbrot-The Looting of Russia
Also: Just Stop It! (Do Nike factories exploit workers?, Olympic
Living Wage Project,Sweatshop Watch, Corporate Watch Intl. Site,
Corporate Watch Japanese Site, Students organizing Against Sweatshops,
Fair Trade Federation, Jubilee 2000 Debt Forgiveness, Economy Watch,
Global Economic Crisis, ZNET Global Economic Crisis Page
Japan: Mad Cow Coverup?--Aug 2001, Hitotsubashi University Student reports,
Looking into Japanese Police Corruption, Japanese History Textbooks,
Nanking and Tinanmen, Okinawa and the U.S. Military in Northeast Asia,
Okinawa Citizens, U.S. Bases and the Dugong, Playing Cat and Mouse with
North Korea, Japanese Military, SDF, Unemployment, Japanese Activists
Fight Globalization, Japanese Election Cheating, Japan and East Timor,
Greenpeace, San Francisco Newspaper Report on Tokaimura, Japanese
Nuclear Industry Unsafe, REALLY Free? A Typical Japanese Newspaper Day
(Why I feel like Throwing Up), Japanese Democracy: Is it dying?
And:
Japanese Domestic Human Rights Violations and 2 songs by Paul, Issue: GM
Food, HIV Murderer Acquitted, Japanese Injustice (Nepali defendant),
Net censorship, March 5 2001 Intl Women's Day Petition to Make War
Illegal , February 28 Ehime Maru: Answering Richard Cohen in the
Washington Post, Japan Computer Access, Darrell Moen, William Wetherall,
Watanabe Takesato, Rights of the Disabled (Tokyo Observer 18),
Balancing the Tax System? The 5% Consumption Tax (The Tokyo Observer 1)
The Search for Labor, the Search for Work (The Tokyo Observer 1),
Lock-Out: Unemployment in Japan (Feb. 1999), Youth and the Economy (Mar.
1999)
And
Language Minorities in Japanese Schools (Aug. 1998) , Language Reform on
the Kitchen Table (Nov. 1998), Is the Foreign Population a Hotbet of
Criminals? (Jan. 2001), Shinjuku's Homeless (The Tokyo Observer 2), The
Homeless: Villains, or Victims? (Aug. 1999), A History of Abuse (The
Tokyo Observer 2),Abuse in Detention (Feb. 1999), Movement for Residence
Rights of Undocumented Workers Begins (Nov. 1999), Why Can't We Get the
Pill in Japan? (Tokyo Observer 19), Before You Sign That Organ Donor
Card, Rearming Japan (May 1999), North Korea (The Tokyo Observer 18),
Questions on the Tokaimura Accident (Nov. 1999), Genpatsu Gypsies (Oct.
2000),
And
Japan's secret war: Japan's race against time to build its own atomic
bomb (Jun. 1999), The Nago Election (Apr. 1998), Attached: Tokyo,
Inamine and the Struggle for Okinawan Self-Determination (Dec. 1998),
The Ishihara Victory: Will They Throw Us Out of Tokyo? (June 1999),
Foreign Worker Groups Protest Gov. Ishihara's Racist Remarks (May 2000),
Soldiers in the Subways: Ishihara's Tokyo Wargames (Oct. 2000), Mori's
Anti-Foreign "Gaffes" (Jun. 2000),Toward Reform in Criminal Reporting
(Dec. 1999), Reference: Amnesty International's Report (Not from our
archives)
And The Pachinko Scam (The Tokyo Observer 18), The CIA in Japan (Tokyo
Observer 13), Review: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War
II (Mar. 2000) The Politics of Amnesia: Reconstructing the Asia-Pacific
War (Sep. 1999)
And:
Japan Progressive Links: Progressive Networks,Portals /??????l?b?g???[?N????, Foreign
Residents in Japan/ ???O???l???????????E?F?u?T?C?g, Individuals'
Sites on Japanese Society andCulture/ ?l??E?E?F?u?T?C?g: ??{???A??
??, Human Rights, Peace, Globalization and Social Justice/ ?l???A???a?A
?O???[?o???[?C?[?V?????A????`, Union-Related and Legal/ ?J???g??/?@?I
???
Latin America: Latin America Watch, Colombia Crisis Pages, Chiapas, Puerto Rico (The
American "Okinawa"), Sanctions: Killing Cuba, Pinochet and Chile, Joyce
Horman on the Killing of Her Husband : Why Pinochet Must Go on Trial,
U.S. Role in Death of Charles Horman, Corporate Involvement in the
Pinochet Coup, CIA Involvement In Chile Coup, Free Lori Berensen, a
young woman held prisoner in Peru, ZNET en Espanol
Justice, Law and Human Rights: Wrongful Executions, Int Court of Justice, Immigration, Police Brutality,
Death Penalty, Amnesty International, Human Rights World Map, World
Organization Against Torture, Human Rights Watch, Nichibenren/Japan
Federation of Bar Associations, Japanese Injustice (Nepali defendant),
FBI: Federal Bureau of Intimidation (Howard Zinn, U.S. Historian), The
APEC Meeting: Property Rights Over Human Rights -Again, Japanese
Domestic Human Rights Violations and 2 songs by Paul
North and South: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Pentagon, International War Crimes, CIA,
Transnational Corporations, South Asia on ZNET, Pakistan
Sexuality and Gender: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising,
by Jean Kilbourne, Advertising and Women--Norman Solomon, Feminist Collections: A
Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources, Feminism and Gender, Queer Watch
Yugoslavia and Kosovo: Bombing of Chinese Embassy was Intentional (U.S. media Ignores Story),
Kosovo and Doublespeak-Herman, Rambouillet: Another Gilf of Tonkin
-Ackerman, NY Times Ignores Violation of War Powers Act by U.S., Kosovo
Lesson/Victory for Whom? ,Bombing of Chinese Embassy was Intentional
(U.S. media Ignores Story), War Diary from Belgrade-20-year-old woman,
Kosovo (and Yugoslavia) on ZNET and more
Back to link 9: Alternative media links
My students interact with media/Teaching Links
Tesolers for Social Responsibility
Professor Dennis Fox (Radical Psychology)
Professor Robert W. Jensen (Journalism)
Professor Darrell Moen (Anthropology, U.S. Policy)
Same student discusses what he has read on the same two issues
Back to link 9: Alternative media links
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