Smarts Quizzes (Sp2010)

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Quiz Archive•Spring 2010

WEEK1MediaSmartsQuiz • 1/15/10 FIXT
1/15/10 Quiz1—The Syllabus

Here are my responses to these questions. Future quizzes will be different, but in this case, the goal of this quiz was to see if you had looked at all the intro material I gave you to read last week. Everyone who did the quiz gets credit. Feel free to comment on any of my comments.

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 +/-).
Pease 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. And how about Pease’s horoscope in the Wednesday (1/20) WORD?

2. Professor Pease claims that, ”We’re being lied to, boys and girls” in (or by) the mass media. That’s (usually) not literally true. So what is Pease saying? Do you agree/disagree? Why?
Pease 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: advertising 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 and unwary. That’s why we need to become media-smart—a basic literacy of the 21st century.

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?
Pease writes: Some of you gave up on this, but I think you just didn’t read the syllabus closely, or think about the metaphor very carefully. Just as a fish is immersed in its environment and is generally unaware of it (unless the pond water gets too bad), we humans 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—in that we often suck in stuff that we didn't specially go looking for—just the stuff that surrounds us in the media environment. 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?
Pease 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 or kids of your own 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?)

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?
Pease 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?

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. A reader poll in the Logan Herald-Journal some years ago asked readers who killed John F. Kennedy. The majority responded that it was a government conspiracy—the theme of Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK.

8. Speaking of “smart fish,” from his bio, what fish do you think may be one of Professor Pease’s favorites?
Pease writes: If you checked my website(s), you’d see a lot of salmon (yes, that silver thing is a Chinook, or King, salmon).

9. Where did Professor Pease earn his master’s degree?
Pease writes: UMinnesota, 1981

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?
Pease writes: You’re right—a trick question. Clearly, it’s me, because I hold your academic fate in my cyberhands.… and if you believe that we need to talk.

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WEEK2MediaSmartsQuiz • 1/26/10 FIXT

1. In Detecting Bull, John McManus argues that the Web has had a democratizing effect because…
a. Democrats made effective use of the Web during the 2008 presidential campaign.
b. The reliability of news is declining.
c. Now anyone can report news to anyone.
d. Newspapers are dying, anyway.
e. The old news models didn’t work.

2. Why does McManus say the reliability of news is declining?
Because the forms that news takes, who produces it, for what purposes, and the technologies used to deliver it are rapidly changing, it is becoming more difficult to identify reliable news and to separate it from rumor, junk journalism and propaganda.

3. Why does Geneva Overholser, former editor and Washington Post ombudsman, say media literacy is needed?
Media literacy is needed to counter the impact of these trends. “Citizens of a democracy have a responsibility to be informed. Media literacy courses, stronger civic education and other tools can create the environment of vigorous debate in which the press can thrive.”—Geneva Overholser.

4. McManus talks about “neural entanglers” who muddy public debate. Who are they?
The neural entanglers—spinmeisters and propagandists—are becoming more skillful. Pundits and talkmeisters and partisan commentators…. From Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) on the left to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the right.

5. In the Pease&Cooper chapter, “Making Sense of the Information Age,” which of the following characterized the change from an Agrarian Society to the Information Age?
a. People no longer grew their own potatoes and other food.
b. A social shift from small community and family units to mass culture.
c. A shift from an individual economy to a mechanized economy.
d. A change from the importance of products to the importance of knowledge.
e. All of the above.

6. FALSE In discussing the impact of TV, E.B. White coined the term “the global village.” It was Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan

7. How does instantaneous mass communication create a “global village”? What does that term mean?
We are all more and more interconnected—potentially closer to one another, with more understanding and interaction (ha!).

8. Among the negative consequences that some people fear about the “information age” . . .
a. people know too much
b. people shop at home
c. people have less contact with others
d. people don’t vote
e. none of the above

9. According to Pease&Cooper, how has the information age diminished a sense of community? Various commentators cited in the chapter worry about isolation (electronic shut-ins—Gans), a loss of national identity and the national conversation (Brown), loss of time spent with famility/humans in favor of TV and electronic distractions….etc.

10. In the news: What major media event takes place in Utah, starting this past week? Sundance Film Festival TWENTYTEN!

BTW: Question: What do you think of the controversy over the Sundance release of USU JCOM alumni Reed Cowan’s documentary, 8: The Mormon Proposition?

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WEEK3MediaSmartsQuiz • 2/5/10 FIXT

1. In his “Some Principles of Media Literacy,” David Considine says the old saying, “The camera never lies” isn’t necessarily so. Why?

Dr. Ted sez: As we are learning, there are a number of reasons why the camera does lie. And that’s not just an artifact of the special-effects era of PhotoShop, multimedia manipulation and the rest. During the Civil War, photography was a technology in its infancy, but even then, famed Civil War photo-documentarian Mathew Brady repositioned dead bodies for “artistic” and storytelling reasons. He may have said, “"My greatest aim has been to advance the art of photography and to make it what I think I have, a great and truthful medium of history," but how “truthful” is it? We also have learned that the way information—text, images or whatever—is framed can alter its meaning, just by including and excluding different elements. In “Forest Gump,” Tom Hanks’ character is seen mooning LBJ, and in “Saving Private Ryan,” Hanks is fighting on Utah Beach in Normandy. Does the camera lie? Of course. (See these links: Media Lit. and More Media Lit.)

2. In the media literacy readings, the authors suggest that production techniques like superimposing a reporter onto a green screen of the White House can have what effect?
a. Makes the news more exciting.
b. Misleads viewers.
c. Increases journalistic credibility.
d. Enhances viewer comprehension.
e. All of the above.
Dr. Ted sez: I can argue that all of these is potentially true. If you watch The Daily Show, you will often see Jon Stewart talking to his reporters in the field—but John Oliver and Jason Jones and Co. are actually just standing there in the studio in from of a green screen and footage from Iraq or the White House or wherever. The studio audience laughs, but the TV viewer could be fooled…. Still, it’s better and more effective storytelling, isn’t it?

3. Why do media literacy proponents argue that citizens need both to understand and be able to analyze/evaluate media messages, but also to create media messages themselves?
Dr. Ted sez: Literacy in the 21st century means not only reading, but visual literacy (see No. 1) and capabilities to communicate with multimedia. The pencil has become a much more sophisticated instrument! Effective communication is a tool for everyday life in 2010.
4. Explain each of the following principles of media literacy and provide a brief example to illustrate your understanding. (1 pt each)

a. Media are constructions: All media messages—words to special effects—are products that someone constructs.
b. Media representations create reality (how and to what effect?): Because of what the message creator selects and how s/he arranges the message’s components, the media product may represent reality to varying degrees. When you see Bigfoot in a business meeting, that may not be complete reality (!) Misrepresentations of fact can mislead readers/viewers. We call that “lying.”
c. Audiences negotiate their own meaning: Audiences are not passive recipients of media messages who just soak in the sender’s intended meaning. All of us see the world and interpret is differently. For us Red Sox fans, Derek Jeter is no hero….
d. Media constructions have commercial purposes: Take a broad view of “commercial”—we who communicate want our target audiences to “buy” something: a philosophy, a perception of the world, an idea, a political position, a bottle of shampoo. More crassly, the more eyeballs a media message attracts, the more valuable it is to people who can sell it….
e. Media messages contain values and ideologies: The worldview of the message producer governs the message tone and focus and emphasis. Even if we try to be absolutely “straight” in our reporting of events, we can’t help but have our own ideas of what’s important, why it matters….
f. Media messages have social and political consequences: Media messages can’t tell us what to think, as we know from agenda-setting theory, but they can tell us what to think about. As the public starts to focus on some issues (and ignore others), pressure may grow to “do something.” People who see the world as a dangerous place may pressure lawmakers to create stronger laws and stiffer penalties and to build more prisons. Policy decisions grow from public sentiment.
g. Each medium has its own unique aesthetic form/impact: Communication is an art form, and like all art forms, some media lend themselves to telling certain kinds of stories better than others. A radio report on a tornado has a different impact than video footage of the damage (or did you see the LA mudslides last weekend?)

5. Explain (briefly) the relationship between the rise of mass communication and the industrial age.

Dr. Ted sez: As people moved from the countryside to cities in pursuit of work or marketplaces or whatever, it became easier to communicate to large groups of people—town criers, pamphlets and posters on walls, newspapers that communicated between a single individual editor/printer to many people at once. Gesellschaft

6. Explain what the heck Marshall McLuhan was talking about with his fish analogy.
Dr. Ted sez: One more time: The fish in the pond is unaware of subtle changes in its environment, and may happily swim around, “breathing” in and out an increasingly toxic environment even until it became so toxic it kills him. We are generally as unaware of our daily media “diets”—stuff we absorb from mass media without even thinking about it, until our perceptions of the world may be altered. See Pease’s column.

7. On Teddy TV, Professor Pease talked about how the advent of TV might have changed Fiji. What happened and what might have been the cause? (The same thing was at work with Dr. Ted’s teenage crush on a French woman…)

Dr. Ted sez: Fijian perceptions of the “norm” of the world—what bodies should look like, how people should act—was influenced as this Polynesian culture started seeing American values on TV. Similarly, ma petite amie française had seen too many Al Capone and Bonny & Clyde movies: Chicago was a dark, dangerous place.

8. Critical thinking about media, according to the reading on Key Concepts of Critical Thinking, is NOT … a. finding fault with media performance
b. learning what to think
c. eliminating incorrect media messages and content
d. protecting children from violent images and ideas
e. none of the above Dr. Ted sez: That’s confusing: critical thinking is none of those things…. So what is it????

9. Discuss your responses to the Billy Joel video in the context of the concepts of media literacy and the central question of this class—how do we know what we think we know?
Dr. Ted sez: A picture is worth at least 100 words—maybe 10,000. Images can be linked to popular culture, iconic images that carry with them much more meaning than just the tones and forms of the photograph. JFK’s shooting, Ghandi, Marilyn Monroe.... These images are shorthand for events that changed the world, the culture, people’s lives and perceptions of life and society. Powerful stuff.

10. General knowledge: Who is Samuel Alito and why is he in the news this week?
Dr. Ted sez: Samuel Alito is a Supreme Court associate justice who was seem reacting negatively to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, when Obama criticized the Court for its decision to permit unlimited political contributions by corporations.
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Examples of Truthiness at Work

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(Posted on JCOM 2010 blogsite 2/7/2010)

Dear Smarties:

I have noted a couple of examples of the ramifications of the “truthiness” syndrome in the press this weekend.

Yesterday (2/6), the Herald-Journal ran this wonderful letter from a guy in Smithfield named Russ Larsen, titled “Gore & Co. distorting facts,” about what he calls “all the recent ‘hoopla’ about global warming.” Click here for the full letter (or see it pasted below). Note the “facts” Mr. Larsen is citing. Wherever you stand on the question of global warming and environmental change, this guy’s understand of reality is a little skewed. I’m not saying he doesn’t believe what he’s saying, but why does he believe it?

Another example is yesterday’s appearance at the Tea Party convention in Nashville by Sarah Palin. Without asserting any facts, Palin pumps up the crowd with her anti-Obama rhetoric, which then can be reported as news on outlets including Fox, which employs her as a commentator. Again, wherever you stand on Obama, reality is being created by the echo chamber of the event, the coverage and the creation of news from the event and the coverage. This morning, Chris Wallace was interviewing Palin (again, a Fox employee) on the Fox Sunday talkshow.... If you repeat something often enough, it becomes important, and maybe even “true.” (See Christian Science Monitor coverage here.)


One more example: In today’s (Sunday 2/7) Salt Lake Tribune, columnist Peg McEntee addresses climate change as a “conspiracy theory”—NOT! (And cartoonist Pat Bagley, right, also focuses on this.) This is targeted at Utah state Rep. Mike Noel of Kanab, who thinks scientists, government officials and liberals are conspiring to force global cooling on us. Last year, Noel asked USU President Stan Albrecht to discipline some USU climate researchers because they had testified before state legislative panels about climate change (they believe it). Noel said these guys are on the state payroll, and shouldn’t be allowed to promote lies. (Noel later backed down). As McEntee reports in her column, Noel and others who see global warming as a fake left-wing conspiracy (like Mr. Larsen from Smithfield, above; Gov. Gary Herbert also thinks humans have nothing to do with climate change) think this is an effort at world population control. Bills are pending before the Utah Legislature to shut down the federal Environmental Protection Agency until “a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.”

So this “truthiness” stuff is complicated. How do we “know” what we think we know? We see letters like Mr. Larsen’s or columns like McEntee’s, or cartoons like Pat Bagley’s, or coverage of rhetorical entertainment like Sarah Palin’s or Glenn Beck’s or Rachel Maddow’s (or Jon Stewart’s!). Yikes! How to decide what to believe? See how important it is to be critically thinking media smarties???

Keep thinking, Smarties.

Dr. Ted

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Gore & Co. distorting facts

Logan Herald-Journal

Saturday, February 6, 2010 2:55 AM CST

With all the recent “hoopla” about global warming, recent factual reports show that the EPA accepted only two so-called analysis reports (one from some ice glacier climber and one from a student on his own opinions) that global warming exists. Other reports, from left-wing radicals (Al Gore), really have distorted the facts.

Remember Mother Nature will do her thing regardless of what others believe. On Dec. 23, 2009, an advertisement on CBS radio, as well as NPR radio, reported that Santa’s elves told Santa that global warming was so real that Santa and the North Pole will no longer exist due to global warming. Imagine Santa’s surprise — this crushing childhood fantasies.

Al Gore and his self-appointed group should be ashamed of themselves. I submit that Al Gore had a troubled childhood.

This is purely unadulterated “horse puckey.” These clowns are in it for the money at yours and my tax money expense.

Yes, Christmas is way too commercialized and the real meaning of Christmas is gone. But, to victimize Santa at the expense of “kooks” like Al Gore and his cronies is absurd to say the least.

With the recent revealing reports of false documents of global warming, Al Gore and his pals should be “cut off” from our taxpayers’ funding. Al Gore should be required to spend two winters in Cache Valley and then be exiled to the coldest part of the world forever with no modern conveniences. End of story. What a savings to us taxpayers.

Think back to TV ads. Butter vs. margarine. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” She will do as she pleases.

Climate change is a scam at our expense. Believe it. You far-out loons are crazy.

Russ Larsen
Smithfield

Book Review: Dubya and the Media

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Book Review
A Dubya in the Headlights: President George W. Bush and the Media. Joseph R. Hayden. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009. 275 pp. $75 hbk.

Note: This book review appears in the Winter 2009 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. I post it because the book illustrates and documents news media manipulation by the White House, and how the resulting “truthiness” served to distort public understanding of events on many levels. —TP

A Dubya in the Headlights is an indictment of the George W. Bush presidency driven by compelling evidence that in no way spares the media.

Joseph Hayden, a former TV producer who teaches journalism at the University of Memphis, begins with research questions that are answered via multiple quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The author enhances statistical data on media coverage by examining individual stories for specific phrasing and imagery. Because the line separating conventional news from entertainment is blurry, he considers the impact of talk shows, movies and even Saturday Night Live, noting how Bush benefited from television’s “inattention to substance.”

Hayden challenges assertions that the Dubya White House masterfully manipulated the media. If the press “doesn’t respect you, and thinks you’re an idiot,” Hayden concludes, “you are no master of press relations.” It was not a matter of clever manipulation of the media, Hayden argues, but a matter of the media allowing (and sometimes enabling) the manipulation.

Bush’s greatest faults, Hayden thinks, was his indifference to his own ignorance and his seeming determination that everyone remain uninformed, too. John Dean said Bush and Cheney “created the most secretive presidency of my lifetime,” which is quite a statement coming from the innermost corridors of the Nixon White House. And Helen Thomas agreed: “[T]his administration’s secrecy is beyond belief, more than any previous administration.”

Beyond concealing relevant information, the Bush White House distributed what Hayden characterized as “chronically misleading information.” It didn’t even have to be an important issue. “A much-cited article in National Review about Bush’s alleged love of reading turns out to be a hoax planted by Karl Rove,” Hayden explains, because the books were simply ones Rove had given to the president. And sometimes it was a matter of absurdly fallacious logic: The U.S. uses waterboarding; the U.S. does not torture. Therefore, waterboarding is not torture.

But the blame is not just the administration’s. Hayden points to the deceptions on the road to Iraq as the most egregious example of the “failure of American news organizations to do their duty as vigilant watchdogs of the public trust.” Bush associated Hussein with WMD, the 9/11 attacks and even mushroom clouds. In a 90-minute presentation before the United Nations, Colin Powell “delivered the knock-out punch,” according to Hayden, “. . . and many Americans, including many journalists, trusted him.”

The New York Times’s Judith Miller was “one of the great enablers and dupes of the Bush White House,” quoting “senior officials” when she distributed false propaganda, Hayden notes; Bush press secretary Scott McClellan later wrote that Miller was “a valued stooge.”

Former TV journalist Karen Ryan, was one of the Bush Administration’s faux reporters. When her VNRs aired, the administration recycled them on their Websites and in promotional materials, which led to a Congressional investigation of VNRs because, as Hayden explains, spending tax dollars on “phony news reports” is illegal. Even conservative commentators squawked, one asking, “How many more of these bozos did Bush buy?”

In the post-9/11 adrenalin flow, Dubya warned, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Hayden questions the false choice that ignores neutrality and stifles dissent, and the penalty for dissent was indeed high—witness the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame “for her husband’s untimely criticism . . . endangering both her and the nation in order to settle political scores.” Ironically, Rove had been fired by Bush’s father more than a decade earlier for leaking a story to the same conservative columnist Robert Novak who named Plame.

Some of the most surprising criticism of Bush’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath came from Fox News commentators Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera. “The administration’s campaign of misinformation was eventually discredited” even by White House “insiders,” Hayden writes. In his 2008 memoir, McClellan charged that the amoral argument of “the ends always justify the means” legitimized all manner of untruths. Hayden acknowledges McClellan’s “regret for the wrongs he committed,” but notes that the Bush insider raised no objections “at the critical time when his reservations might have made a difference,” when he was “publicly defending” the misdeeds.

In his final chapter, Hayden considers Dubya’s legacy. In a 2004 poll of 400 historians, 338 assessed Dubya’s presidency as a failure. In a 2008 follow-up poll, the failure assessment rose from 81 percent to 98 percent, and 61 percent of the historians ranked it as the worst presidency ever. Even the conservative Weekly Standard declared it “a failed presidency” in a cover story.

But, as this work records, the press shares blame for that failure. Hayden has delivered a fascinating, well-documented narrative that demands critical introspection by so many in the media who bear guilt in the Dubya story.

—SUSAN GONDERS
Southeast Missouri State University

Essay Instructions

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General Instructions on Smarts Essays

Three pages (1,200-1,500 words), 12-point Times (or equivalent), double-spaced, one-inch margins, emailed to Dr. Ted as a Word attachment. Dr. Ted will post essays on the class blog so everyone can see what you’ve come up with.

Writing Guidelines
1. Intro: Summarize, but not everything! What’s the most startling, most interesting “news” from your study? What are your key findings? (In news-talk, what’s the “lead” of your story. See The Fred Rule)
2. The Central Message: What is the overall message conveyed in the Fox news stories about your topic? How is the issue framed by Stewart and/or Colbert? In other words, how are audiences encouraged to think about the issue?
3. What are the facts? Based on our research on the online fact-checking sources, is the way the issue is framed by Fox and Stewart/Colbert true or truthy? Compare the facts from your research to the specific examples of coverage of the topic you examined.
4. News Media Performance: How’s they do? How well were the Fox and Comedy Central fact-claims supported by evidence? Were any fact-claims erroneous? Was important information omitted, distorted, or taken out of context? Specific examples needed.
5. Bias? Was the coverage partisan, biased, or incomplete/inacccurate?
6. Examples: What terms are used to describe frame the issues? Are the terms “;oaded” in any way? How?
7. Assess: Based on what you know from reading coses of journalistic ethics and the Hutchins standards for a socially responsible press, how fair and balanced or “truthy” was the coverage? Be specific.
8. Apply Mass Comm Theories in evaluating the media performance. What agendas were being set, what info got through the news “gate” and what didn’t? How was your issue framed? What kinds of attitudes might audiences cultivate from the coverage?
9. Conclusions: How are audiences encouraged to “think” about this topic/issue?
10. References: Include a reference page listing all sources and URLs (MLA or APA style).

Notes:
• All web sources are NOT created equal. That means no Wikipedia. Click here for info on how to determine the reliability of online sources. The sources teams use for this assignment need to be from reliable news sources, academic articles or books and nonpartisan “fact-check” online sources listed on project directions.
• This is NOT an opinion essay. This is a critical analysis using documented sources.
• Writing counts. One usage issue: “Media” is a plural noun and requires a plural verb. Correct: “The media are completely screwed up.” Incorrect: “The media is completely unbiased.”
• Grading: Essays will be graded on the basis of the instructor’s assessment of a) the quality of your argument(s); b) how well and how completely you address the central questions; c) the content of your essay; d) writing and mechanics (e.g., spelling, grammar, syntax, organization, etc.); and e) whether your conclusions are supported by your data.
• Help? Let me know if you have questions regarding the goals/focus/content/direction of the project.
• Have fun.
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Press Freedom and Responsibility

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PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF FREE EXPRESSION IN SOCIETY

By Edward C. Pease
©1991

[Excerpted from Pease, E.C., STILL THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE: Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers (Athens, Ohio: E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, 1991)]

In a society based on individual rights and participation, democracy may be defined as a process of dialogue among all constituent groups. The philosophy on which this nation was founded holds as central to its basic democratic structure the importance of the individual vis a vis society. This includes a presumption of the individual’s power of rational thought and concepts of individual natural rights – including religion, speech and press.[1] These concepts were the prevailing notions of Locke, Milton, Mill, Paine and other 17th- and 18th-century thinkers whose writings combined eventually into marketplace-of-ideas theory, from which the First Amendment developed.

Central to the theory is the entirely free and unfettered exchange of ideas, including a free press operating within a social system in which all opinions had equal chance to be heard, the assumption being that truth would emerge from a robust and wide-open debate on issues of public importance. As Milton put it in his Areopagitica, “Let Her and Falsehood grapple; who ever heard of Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”[2] From Milton’s perspective, and that of other libertarians, it was preferable to permit false opinion in the marketplace of ideas than to limit open exchange of ideas, any one of which might contain or lead to truth; free discussion was a self-righting process from which truth eventually would emerge. As social philosopher Carl Becker explained it:

The democratic doctrine of freedom of speech and of the press ... rests upon certain assumptions. One of these is that men desire to know the truth and will be disposed to be guided by it. Another is that the sole method of arriving at the truth in the long run is by the free competition of opinion in the open market. Another is that, since men will invariably differ in their opinions, each man must be permitted to urge, freely and even strenuously, his own opinion, provided he accords others the same right. And the final assumption is that from this mutual toleration and comparison of diverse opinions the one that seems the most rational will emerge and be generally accepted.[3]

Drawing on the work of his father, James Mill, and that of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill’s brand of 17th-century libertarianism was pragmatic and utilitarian: To achieve the greatest good for the greatest number in society, he said, society must insure that all its members have the right to think and act for themselves. Limiting expression, Mill suggested, would limit society members’ ability to think for themselves. Mill made a four-part argument: First, suppressing opinions – however disagreeable they might be to others – might result in suppressing the truth, he said. Second, even an erroneous opinion might contain a kernel of truth, leading to the larger truth. Third, even if the generally held opinion is truth, the public may cling to it irrationally, solely because of rote and tradition, unless forced to defend it. Finally, Mill said, unless the commonly held opinion is challenged occasionally and those holding it are forced to reaffirm it, even truth loses its strength and positive effects on individuals and society.[4]

As Mill wrote in his essay, On Liberty:

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ... If the opinion is right, [people] are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.[5]

By the beginning of the 20th century, however, pure libertarianism was on the wane as newspapers and other media grew in size and influence, and the concept of the wide-open debate among individuals was supplanted by the reality of mass communication driven by technological advances. Public resentment of the size, scope, influence and excesses of the press gave rise to efforts to legislate limits on them; the media’s occasionally irresponsible exercise of their First Amendment freedom thus threatened all rights of individual free expression. Media scholar Theodore Peterson argues in his seminal Four Theories of the Press that, just as libertarian theory was founded on the principle of a “negative freedom” – that is, freedom from external restraint – new thinking in the 20th century saw a need for a press both free from restraints but also responsible to larger society.[6] What became known after publication of the Hutchins Commission report as social responsibility theory rests equally on a negative freedom from restraints, as well as on a positive freedom of the press to be proactive – freedom for social good, freedom to help society attain its goals.[7] J. Edward Gerald agreed: “Mass communications media are social institutions, the product of social demand,” which include predictable expectations of performance.[8]

The new social responsibility perspective of the press added to libertarianism the concept of the public’s right to know, at the same time placing moral responsibilities on publishers, who themselves had begun to link responsibility to overall public good with their constitutionally mandated freedom. Because liberty carries with it obligations, the greater freedom accorded the press in a democratic system carries with it responsibilities to fulfill certain functions in society.[9]

Leading newspaper publishers already had come to similar conclusions on their own regarding the role of the press in the new, industrial age. Joseph Pulitzer, legendary publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, told his staff in 1907 that his paper should be

an institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice and corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.[10]

In the inaugural issue of his Detroit Evening News in 1873, James Scripps enunciated a similar vision of the role of the crusading press that was reminiscent of Milton:

Nineteenth Century Americans need not have their opinions molded for them by the newspaper press. Give the public the facts and arguments on both sides, and they will quickly determine the right or wrong in each case as it occurs. The vox populi, in the long run, will pretty certainly be found to be the vox Dei.[11]

His younger brother, E.W. Scripps, in his first issue of the Cleveland Penny Press in 1878, addressed these same issues of independence from special interest pressures and voiced libertarian confidence in the rational abilities of the reading public. He wrote: “The newspapers should simply present all the facts the editor is capable of obtaining, concerning men and measures before the bar of the public, and then, after having discharged its duty as a witness, be satisfied to leave the jury in the case – the public –to find the verdict.”[12]

Adolph S. Ochs, upon assuming control of The New York Times in 1860, had a similar vision for his paper: “. . . to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interest involved; to make the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all public questions of importance and, to that end, to invite intelligent discussion for all shades of opinion.”[13]

But despite the sensibilities of publishers such as Pulitzer, Scripps and Ochs, as the press grew in size and influence, it came under increasing criticism. By 1900, the criticisms had fallen into seven basic themes:

1) The press and its press barons had wielded power to their own ends, at the expense of opposing views and discussion.

2) The press had become subservient to big business and advertisers.

3) The press resisted social change.

4) The press stressed the superficial and sensational over the significant.

5) Press content endangered public morals.

6) The press invaded individuals’ privacy.

7) And the press was controlled by a single socioeconomic class, further endangering any chance for robust and wide-open debate in the free and open marketplaces of ideas.[14]

Following World War II, the American public was frightened by the images of thought manipulation through mass communication, brought on by the Nazi propaganda machine. Those fears, coupled with the growth of the mass communications industry and the social and technological changes that followed the industrial revolution, led Henry R. Luce, founder and publisher of Time, to commission a group of scholars in 1947 to examine the prospects for a free press in America.

The Hutchins Commission

Echoing Mill, the chairman of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago, described concerns about the role of the mass media in the 20th century this way: “The tremendous influence of the modern press makes it imperative that the great agencies of mass communication show hospitality to ideas which their owners do not share. Otherwise, these ideas will not have a fair chance.”[15]

The commission said freedom of the press in 1946 was in danger for three reasons. First, the press’s importance to society had increased with its capacity to communicate to mass audiences; at the same time, however, the proportion of people able to communicate their opinions and ideas through the press had decreased. Second, those with access to the press “have not provided a service adequate to the needs of society,” the commission said. Third, press performance had so outraged some segments of society in the 1940s that threats of regulation had surfaced.[16] The commission said:

When an instrument of prime importance to all the people is available to a small minority of the people only, and when it is employed by that small minority in such a way as not to supply the people with the service they require, the freedom of the minority in employment of that instrument is in danger.[17]

More precisely, Gerald wrote, as the press evolved into big business, its priorities also shifted, from dissemination of diverse ideas to bottom-line economic issues. The Hutchins Commission concluded that such emphasis on profits threatened the media’s likelihood of providing “the variety of information and debate that the people need for self-government,” he said. Further, he said,

[i]n such media, entertainment takes precedence over matters of importance to social understanding and self-government. The urgencies of conciliation between nations and between racial and religious groups at home are minimized or overlooked by media with such a distributive goal. Salestalk through advertising and propaganda in the news constitutes a hazard to clear description and understanding of human problems.[18]

Press barons for years had recognized that shift themselves. E.W. Scripps, for instance, who never was shy about making a buck, wrote a year before his death in 1926:

There was a time in this country when newspapers were run for the purpose of moulding public opinion and their owners were deemed lucky if they gained an incidental profit. Now newspapers are run for profit and only incidentally are moulders of public opinion, leaders of the people in politics, and teachers.[19]

The Hutchins Commission considered free expression the central freedom of American democracy, but feared that a press seen by public and government as both unfettered and irresponsible risked losing its First Amendment franchise. To preserve its freedom, the report concluded, the press must serve the society that has accorded it that freedom. “The freedom of the press can remain a right of those who publish only if it incorporates into itself the right of the citizen and the public interest,” the commission wrote.[20] After four years of hearings, the Hutchins Commission released a five-point guideline for press performance that represented a new view of the relationship between the mass media and society. The American press should provide

1) a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning;

2) a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism;

3) a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society;

4) presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society; and

5) full access to the day’s intelligence.[21]

Consistent with the thinking of some newspaper leaders, as indicated by the statements of Ochs, Scripps and Pulitzer, the recommendations outlining changes in the way journalists should look at their jobs and at the media’s role in society. The five points also provide the first of two frameworks here for evaluating press practices and performance.

The Hutchins Commission Charge to the Press

The Hutchins Commission’s guidelines were, on the one hand, direct, straight-forward and commonsensical. At the same time, they enunciated a press function from which the media had sometimes strayed: “The first requirement is that the media should be truthful. They should not lie,” the commission report said.[22] The commission also cautioned the press to separate fact from opinion, while acknowledging that that requirement cannot be absolute: “There is no fact without context and no factual report which is uncolored by the opinions of the reporter.”[23]

The second recommendation, that the press provide “a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism,” underscored the commission’s view of the media’s responsibility as “common carriers of public discussion.”[24] These public discussions should include even – perhaps especially – ideas with which the media owners might not agree. “Their control over the various ways of reaching the ear of America is such that, of they do not publish ideas which differ from their own, those ideas will never reach the ear of America,” the report said.[25]

The third recommendation, particularly relevant to the issue of minorities and the media, underlined the media’s responsibility to present “a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.”[26] “People make decisions in large part in terms of favorable or unfavorable images,” the report said. “They relate fact and opinion to stereotypes. [The media] are principal agents in creating and perpetuating these conventional conceptions. When the images they portray fail to present the social group truly, they tend to pervert judgment.”[27] Such representations of all segments of the American society was seen as a means toward greater understanding and harmony: “The Commission holds to the faith that if people are exposed to the inner truth of the life of a particular group, they will gradually build up respect for and understanding of it.”[28]

The fourth press function, as the Hutchins Commission saw it, was one of education, “the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society.”[29] The press had both an opportunity and a responsibility to help maintain community standards and preserve the society’s values. Finally, the commission said, the press must provide the public with “full access to the day’s intelligence,” something with which no journalist would disagree. “We do not assume that all citizens at all times will actually use all the material they receive. ... But [that] does not alter the need for wide distribution of news and opinion,” the report said. The press must provide the public with enough complete and truthful information that citizens can, “by the exercise of reason and of conscience,” make the decisions necessary to maintain an orderly society, the commission concluded.[30]

After 1947, the press reassessed its role and responsibilities, increasingly operating from the Hutchins Commission’s vision of a two-way relationship between the press and society, encompassing both the rights of free expression ascribed to Milton and marketplace-of-ideas theory, as well as a new expectation of the media’s responsibility to the social system that had accorded such rights. In one way, however, little had changed, the commission report said: “We need a market place for the exchange of comment and criticism regarding public affairs. We need to reproduce on a gigantic scale the open argument which characterized the village gathering two centuries ago.”[31]

In the Hutchins Commission’s view, press freedom was balanced by the press’s responsibility as a public servant. “We suggest that the press look upon itself as performing a public service of a professional kind. ... that the press must take on the community’s objectives as its own objectives.” [emphasis original][32]

It was with this image of the media-as-public servant that America entered the 1960s and their growing clamor for racial equity. In very many ways, the events of that decade represented the first test of the Hutchins Commission vision of press performance. It was a test the media failed.

• • • • •

NOTES

1. Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson & Wilbur Schramm, Four Theories of the Press. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1956).
2. John Milton, Aeropagitica, 1644.
3. Carl L. Becker, Progress and Power. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), p. 33, as cited in Siebert, op. cit., p. 44.
4. Siebert, op. cit., p. 46.
5. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, edited by Alburey Castell (New York: F.S. Crofts and Co., 1947), p. 16.
6. Theodore Peterson, Four Theories of the Press, op. cit., p. 93-4.
7. Ibid.
8. J. Edward Gerald, The Social Responsibility of the Press. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 7.
9. Peterson, op. cit., p. 74.
10. Joseph Pulitzer, message to his staff, April 10, 1907, cited in Edward L. Bernays, Public Relations Problems of the American Press. (New York: National Newspaper Promotion Association, 1952).
11. James Scripps, Detroit Evening News, Aug. 23, 1873. Cited in draft of Vance Trimble, The Astonishing Mr. Scripps. (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press), in press.
12. E.W. Scripps, The Cleveland Penny Press, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 2, 1878, p. 1.
13. Adolph S. Ochs, The New York Times, August 18, 1896, cited in Bernays, op. cit.
14. See Peterson, op. cit., p. 78.
15. Robert M. Hutchins, Foreword, in The Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible Press: A General Report on Mass Communication: Newspapers, Radio, Motion Pictures, Magazines and Books. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), p. viii.
16. Ibid., p. 1.
17. Ibid., pp.1-2.
18. Gerald, op. cit., p. 104.
19. E.W. Scripps, “The Wisdom of an Old Penman,” June 1, 1925, p. 6. (The Scripps Archive, Alden Library, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio)
20. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., p. 18.
21. Ibid., pp. 20-29.
22. Ibid., p. 21.
23. Ibid., p. 22.
24. Ibid., p. 23.
25. Ibid., p. 24.
26. Ibid., p. 26.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., pp. 26-27.
29. Ibid., p. 27.
30. Ibid., p. 29. Peterson suggests that this recommendation assisted in the evolution of the principle of freedom of information and the public’s right to know; if the press has a mandate to provide the fullest possible access to the day’s intelligence, it must also possess a right of access to such information. It is the logical underpinning of press demands for free flow of information from the public sector. See Peterson, op. cit., p. 91.
31. A Free and Responsible Press, op. cit., pp. 67-68.
32. Ibid., pp. 92, 126.

Purchasing Detecting Bull

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JCOM 2010 Text

The required “text” for JCOM 2010—Media Smarts is a DVD “book” called Detecting Bull—How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism in Print, Broadcast and on the Wild Web (2009) by John McManus, who also operates the website GradetheNews.org.

Detecting Bull is a great example of one of the concepts we’ll discuss in Smarts—technological convergence, which means the phenomenon of difference media technologies coming together into single packages incorporating text, video, audio and web resources.

You may purchase Bull either as a download directly to your computer, or as a physical DVD from the Detecting Bull website.

NOTE: The universal player for the online download version of the “book” doesn’t work well on Macintosh, so you’ll have to order a physical DVD.

Got to the Detecting Bull website and then click on “Buy” in the lefthand column. That page will give you information on either downloading the Haihaisoft universal player, required to read the “book” on PC’s with Windows, or for ordering the physical version for Macs.

Because McManus is a longtime educator, he offers his book in this electronic format to keep the prices down, and so he can update the material in the fast-changing world of mass media.

If you have problems obtaining your desired version of Bull, contact either your instructor or John McManus directly (by clicking “Contact” in the lefthand column of the Bull website).

Get Bull, and start getting Media Smart!
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JCOM Courses Go Online

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JCOM Launches for Online Minor

The USU journalism department has opened cyberspace to a new era of online journalism instruction with several JCOM courses offered online as part of the department’s new online minor in journalism and public relations.

Beginning in Spring 2010, the full pre-major core for all JCOM majors—Newswriting (JCOM 1130), Intro to Mass Communication (JCOM 1500), and Media Smarts (JCOM 2010)—will be online, as will the PR core for an online minor.

The first online class, offered in Spring 2009, was beginning newswriting class. JCOM 2010—Media Smarts launched in Fall 2009, along with JCOM 2300—Introduction to Public Relations, and JCOM 2310—Writing for Public Relations.

Professor Ted “Pixelhead” Pease “test-drove” the basic newswriting and Media Smarts classes; PR faculty Preston Parker and Troy Oldham designed the online PR offerings.

“This is the future of the communication field—using new technologies to teach and apply both traditional and new journalism and PR skills,” said Pease, a veteran newspaper journalist and JCOM interim department head, who has taught at USU since 1994. “We’s excited to be expanding our reach in this way, exploring how students can learn their craft online and interactively, since that’s how so many of them will be making their livings after graduation.”

The online editions of the regular face-to-face classes reach students both on-campus and at a distance who work independently, through blogs and the university’s statewide interactive distance education network.

For more information about the JCOM Department at USU, and its new online PR minor, visit the department website, and JCOM’s award-winning student online news“paper,” the Hard News Café.

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