2010 Quiz2

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FIXT!

Media Smarts Online (JCOM 2010) • Fall 2010
Your Name: Dr. Ted Answers
9/6/10 Quiz1—The Syllabus

1. There are quotes from real people throughout the Smarts syllabus, including the four that lead it. Pick one of the quotes from anywhere in the syllabus that you particularly like, and that you can relate to your idea of why being “media smart” is important. (two pithy sentences +/-).

Dr. Ted writes: I like so many of them (obviously), from “Question Authority” to the Tom Stoppard quote about “nudging the world a little” that I use on my email signature. E.B. White, however, is one of my particular heroes. His quote about television, the first time he saw it demonstrated in New York in 1938, was prescient, I think. Can you imagine worrying in such circumstances about how “messages, distant and concocted” would affect how people interacted with each other, and wondering if TV would be a “saving radiance” or a “disturbance of the general peace.” Smart man. Here’s another quote I like, but it’s not on the syllabus: “Don’t take life too serious, Son. It ain’t nohow permanent.” … from an old Pogo comic strip.

Each of these quotes has an important back-story. For example, “Question Authority” is a protest button and bumpersticker from the 1960s. Today, an engaged and alert citizen always should question authority and take everything with a large grain of salt (like when Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or Joe Biden starts spouting!). So if I’m feeling rebellious or ticked off, I’ll pick “Question Authority.” But Tom Stoppard does a lot with his statement about words and their power: care must be taken with words and language; as a writer and reader I appreciate this. And the thought that mere words can nudge the world—make a difference—is a powerful concept. I like so many quotes from Stoppard’s to Ginzberg controlling the culture, to the thousands of others I’ve collected over 15 years of Today’s WORD on Journalism. I also like Sir William Berkleley, because he ridiculously condemns both education and free thinking in one swoop. But E.B. White is one of my particular heroes. His quote about television, from the first time he saw it demonstrated in New York in 1938, was prescient, I think. Can you imagine worrying in such circumstances about how “messages, distant and concocted” would affect how people interacted with each other, and wondering if TV would be a “saving radiance” or a “disturbance of the general peace.” Smart man. And that’s exactly the kind of issues we examine in this class—how technological changes in media changed and affected the larger society.

2. Professor Pease claims that, “We’re being lied to, boys and girls” in the mass media. That’s (usually) not literally true. So what is Pease saying? Do you agree/disagree? Why?
Dr. Ted writes: Perhaps “misled” is a better term than “lied to,” but I think the point needs consideration. As you will read in the media literacy materials, ALL media messages are constructions that are purposive and intentional on the part of their creators: ad people want viewers to buy soap; political consultants want voters to buy candidates or issues, photographers retouch women to make them seamless and breastier and thinner. We all see the world differently, based on our own experiences and background (as we’ll discuss in the context of mass communication theories). So all media messages are created with the particular perspective of their author embedded in them, intentionally or not. Is that lying? Not really. Could it be? It’s at least potentially misleading to the unaware.
3. Explain Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the “fish,” and how those of us who now live in the mass media age are like his fish. Does that analogy make sense to you?

Dr. Ted writes: Some of you gave up on this, but I think you just didn’t think about the metaphor very carefully. Just as a fish is immersed in its environment, and is generally unaware of it (unless it gets too bad), we live in a mass-mediated age in which messages on TV and radio and billboards and magazines and the Internet, etc. etc., are EVERYWHERE. Most of us, like the fish, are generally unaware of how the media content we breathe in and out may change our perspectives on the world, create assumptions about people and things and issues. Our mass media diet is to a large degree unintentional, just the stuff that surround us in the media environment, and most of us—like McLuhan’s fish—don’t think much about how toxic that stuff that we breathe in and out might be. Becoming aware of that environment—that’s being a smart fish!

4. Columnist Erma Bombeck is quoted as saying that, “My children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.” What is she saying, and how does it relate to what we’re studying in this course? Dr. Ted writes: Among the most vulnerable of the “fish” in this mass media pond where we all live in the 21st Century are children, who have their preferences and perspectives formed for them by TV more than any other single source. So Bombeck’s kids preferred the stuff that had been sold to them in entertaining ways on TV. They believed what they saw on TV more than they believed stuff they actually experienced. Any of you who have small siblings or cousins know about how important the right (fill in the blank)…clothes, toys, video games, pickup trucks (older kids…) are. Where do they get that? A study released yesterday (1/20) found that kids spend as much as 12 hours a day with some form of gadget—cell phones, TV, computers, games. Talk about a generation of couch potatoes!
5. What’s your impression of John McManus’s website? (And have you bought “Detecting Bull” yet? If you have, what do you think of it so far?)
You’d better have it by now!
6. McManus, on his website, says, “[M]ainstream news is becoming shallower and more commercially biased—more written for advertisers and by publicity agents. Online, new providers are arising. But most don't follow professional principles.” Why might that be a problem? Dr. Ted writes: As per some of the previous items, even as our society becomes more cyber-connected, the actual content of what’s in the pipeline (or electronic IV tube) that fills out days and lives is increasingly trivial. The mass media should be an amazing tool for public education and knowledge. Instead…American Idol, beer ads, Anna Nicole Smith…. The head of the Federal Communications Commission called TV a “vast wasteland” nearly 40 years ago. Has that assessment changed? Further, in an online world, anyone can be a “journalist,” an authority, regardless of his or her credentials, knowledge, facts, biases. Bad information is resulting in an even greater lessening of journalists’ credibility, and without credibility journalism is nothing but noise. So where and how can we get information—factual and balanced—that we need to make decisions?
7. How confident are you that you know the real story behind the kinds of historical events discussed briefly in the syllabus? Can you identify a specific piece of history you may have “learned” about through a movie or TV show, and that, you now realize, may not be completely accurate? Pease writes: Be smart fish. Consume media critically, with a large grain of salt. It’s a little scary that so many people—including, maybe, some you the people in this class—“see” and “know” the world and history based on entertainment media.
8. Speaking of “smart fish,” from his bio, what fish do you think may be one of Professor Pease’s favorites? Dr. Ted writes: If you checked my website(s), you’d see a lot of salmon (yes, that silver thing is a Chinook, or King, salmon) and halibut. 9. Where did Professor Pease earn his PhD? Dr. Ted writes: Ohio University, 1991 (Doctor of Philosophy...or, Piled Higher & Deeper)

10. You should have watched (and maybe shared with your friends and other lumps of clay) the Stephen Colbert video on the Week1 list. So who is funnier—Professor Pease or Stephen Colbert? Why? Dr. Ted writes: You’re right—a trick question. Clearly, me, because I hold your academic fate in my cyberhands. … and if you believe that we need to talk.


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