Media Statistics

One of the best sources of news about changes taking place in the media industry can be found in the incredibly deep Project Excellence in Journalism run by the Pew Research Center at http://www.journalism.org. Reports include weekly analysis of news coverage and an annual evaluation of each of the major mass media.

9/11 Television Archive

Here is a link to a week’s worth of coverage, minute by minute, of the September 11th terrorism attacks from a host of television channels. The news is broken down into thirty-second segments. The archive contains a week’s worth of material from a wide range of networks, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC, a range of U.S. network affiliates, along with channels out of Iraq, Gaza, Russia, Mexico, France, Canada, and Japan. The site also has a big collection of articles about television coverage of the attacks and links to numerous other related materials:

 

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2011/09/01/great-911-television-archive/

 

Exercises: The possibilities for assignments here are endless. Students can compare U.S. versus international coverage, Fox versus CNN, or network versus cable coverage.

 

Zap2It Television Ratings News

Get the daily, weekly, and season-long television ratings:

http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/

NOTES: These statistics can be fascinating to look at. For example, in the fall of 2003, broadcast television was facing rapidly declining viewership that analysts were having trouble explaining. It is likely that better programming will recover some of this audience, but media use is in a very fluid period right now. One report has suggested that the fall-off in television watching by young males ages 16 to 25 can be blamed on video games!

Classroom Debate on the Seven Secrets

Take one of the Seven Secrets and provide a real-life example of how you see it working in the media world around you. Be as specific as you can. While you can use the same truth as other people in the class, you each need to have separate examples.

Classroom Debate on Secret One: How do you consume media?

Are you a media multitasker? Do you watch a single program from beginning to end, flip from channel to channel looking for something interesting, or watch two shows at once? Do you surf the Internet or study while the set is on? Do you think multitasking viewers change the type of programming broadcasters provide? Why?

NOTES: Watching my teenager consume media can be a revelation. Very rarely will he have a single channel going. Whenever he is in his room, he will have Twitter running. Either the television will be on or music will be playing as he does homework (adding a book or two to the media mix). Increasingly, media targeted at younger users will have an interactive component that tries to engage and keep the user from changing channels.

Classroom Debate on Secret Five: The legacy of fear

For as long as there have been media, there have been those who blame the media for society’s ills. Others believe that critics are just trying to blame a convenient target. How do you feel about this debate? Why?

NOTES: Although the legacy of fear grew out of concerns about the new mass media during the first half of the twentieth century, it has continued to pop up with each new medium. The “Cyberporn” issue of Time magazine is a prime example, as are recent concerns about violent music lyrics and video games. Which is not to say that there are not legitimate concerns about all these media, but only that the same concerns seem to resurface each time we see new media. You can build a good research assignment by having students look for examples of current media criticism that deal with the fears outlined in the box. Note that an Internet or library search for the term legacy of fear is not helpful and will primarily return fiction written under that title.

When Words Matter

The words we use matter intensely. Sometimes they tell others a lot about who we are. Sometimes when we use the wrong words we hurt people we hadn’t intended to. And sometimes we don’t have any idea what the actual words are:

 

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2014/11/21/when-words-matter/

Questions: Consider, for example, the language people use to refer to immigrants who enter the United States without the permission to do so. How does using different words change how we feel about or perceive people?

 

Why Media Bias is Complicated

 

If you want to ever get involved in a no-win scenario argument about the media, start talking about media bias. Critics on both the right and the left maintain that there is either a liberal or a conservative bias in the media’s coverage of the news. Journalist and author Richard Reeves notes that for each example of a bias in one direction, there is an example of bias in the opposite direction. Conservatives point out that there are disproportionate numbers of liberals working as reporters. Liberals argue that large corporations own the media and that they slant the news in favor of industry and business.

 

And you know what? They’re both (to a degree) correct.

 

And we could see this playing out during the 2014 election.

 

As reported on the ever excellent media criticism site JimRomenesko.com:

The owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com tells readers that his media outlets won’t be making a governor’s race endorsement this year. What Gerry Lenfest fails to disclose is that he gave $250,000 to Gov. Tom Corbett’s campaign. One of his journalists writes in an email: “Given Lenfest’s history of Corbett donations and the likelihood that the Inquirer’s. . . left-leaning editorial board (and certainly the Daily News’) would have endorsed [challenger Tom] Wolf, it looks really, really bad.” 

 

This is absolutely a perfect example of this. You have newspapers with editorial boards that lean left, and an owner who leans right. The owner likely anticipates an endorsement from his papers he would disagree with, so he decides his papers won’t endorse anyone.

When you go to look at the papers, you don’t see the conservative candidate being endorsed, so a reader might assume that there is no conservative bias at play, but in fact it is the owner’s conservatism that may be keeping the paper from endorsing the more liberal candidate:

 

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2014/10/28/why-media-bias-is-complicated/

Questions: How do you see multiple points of view/biases emerging from your local newspaper or broadcaster? What do you think is the source of that point of view? Were you surprised to find that?

 

CLASSROOM DEBATE ON SECRET SIX: OPINION IN THE NEWS

Do you prefer news presented with an explicit point of view (as on Fox News or MSNBC) or in a detached manner (as on C-SPAN)? Do you think that it is possible for most news outlets to keep their views out of the news?

NOTES: You will certainly get a response from your students on this one. There are a couple of issues you might want to raise with students here. First, students will perceive anything they disagree with as biased and anything they like as balanced and reasonable. The more difficult issue is to get students to see that there are multiple forms that bias can take. This discussion can be a good launching ground for the Gans’s Basic Journalistic Values media literacy exercise.

New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen posted an excellent essay on the ideology of the American press in June of 2010 that you might find helpful as well:

• http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/06/14/ideology_press.html

In 2009, I participated in an extended debate via Facebook on media bias with my friend and conservative journalist Danny Glover. You can read a transcript of that debate here:

• http://ralphehanson.com/blog/archive_09_04.html#042309_bias

 

Classroom Debate: More or less choice?

In the twenty-first century, we have more media options available to us than ever before. But these media outlets are owned by a small number of corporations. Given this, do you believe we as media consumers have more choices or fewer? Why?

NOTES: This is one of the central debates relating to modern mass media. We have more outlets owned by fewer companies. For example, we now have six or more broadcast networks compared to three in the past. On the other hand, fewer and fewer local television stations are independently owned by individuals within the communities that the stations serve. There are literally hundreds of options when it comes to cable channels, but in many cases they are repackages of the same basic sets of material.

Classroom Debate on Secret Seven: Who controls the media?

Who do you believe controls the media? What evidence do you have of their influence? How has this chapter changed your understanding of who runs the media?

NOTES: My high school journalism teacher was fond of asking us her favorite question: “Who is ‘them’?” Any time we claimed that some anonymous “them” was responsible for something, we had to explain who “them” was. That’s the point behind this Classroom Debate?getting students to look at who the media are and who controls them. Who is the “them” who controls the media. This is where Secret Seven?There is no “they” originated.

 

Books as a changing medium

Read the following:

• It is apparent that books as a medium are going through a rapid period of change right now, but this is not the first time this has happened. Last year The Atlantic's Web site ran an excellent article looking at 10 revolutions that have taking place in reading (and hence with books) over the last couple of millenniums. ( I also have a blog post you can read on the subject.)
• The biggest change taking place right now is the enormous growth in the sale of e-books and e-book readers. According to Gigaom, the U.S. consumer e-book market will be bigger than the print book market by 2017, and Amazon.com notes that the online bookstore now sells more Kindle-formatted e-books than hardbacks and paperbacks combined.
• The Washington Post's Ezra Klein talks about the advantages and disadvantages traditional books have over electronic books.

Questions:

• How is the book industry changing in the twenty-first century? What is new about it? What is the same? How are the changes that are taking place now different or similar to those that have taken place in the past. Be specific, arguing with examples from your readings.
• Are e-books significantly different than books printed on paper? If they are different, what makes e-books different? (Think about both the physical differences and the cultural and business differences. Again, be specific with examples.)
• Have you used an e-book? Do you own a Kindle, Nook, or use e-book software on your computer or tablet? What do you think of the experience?

Classroom Debate On Secret One: Influential Books

Are books more influential than television or movies? Why do you think so? Which medium has caused more change and turmoil in the world?

NOTES: Although movies, television programming, and CDs attract the most attention when it comes to concerns about media effects, there is a reasonable argument to be made that books have a much bigger influence on people. The Bible, the Koran, and the Torah (scriptures for the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish faiths) would have to rank very high on the list of most influential media content of all time.

Classroom Debate On Secret Six: Banned Books

Should parents be able to get books banned from schools because they find ideas or language in them objectionable? Why or why not?

NOTES: For up-to-date information on book banning in the United States, visit the American Library Association’s Banned Book Week Web site:

http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/index.cfm

The site outlines the most frequently challenged books, help with dealing with challenges, and information about the law on banning or challenging books.

This can be the launching ground for either an in-class discussion or for an out-of-class writing assignment.

As I mention in the textbook, it should be remembered that most attempts to challenge a title in the United States result in it being removed from a library or a required reading list. The “banned book” is typically still available within the community, though not with the ease that it was before.

 

Should Magazine Covers Be True-to-Life?

Self, a health and fitness magazine for women, found itself in the middle of a controversy in the fall of 2009 over its portrayal of how women look—specifically, singer Kelly Clarkson. The American Idol star was featured on the September 2009 cover of the magazine. Her image went through the usual digital retouching for color correction and the like, but the photo editor also added in a few digital hair extensions and, while he or she was at it, slimmed down Clarkson considerably. Usually accusations of Photoshopping are met with denials or statements that only minimal changes were made. But Self editor-in-chief Lucy Danziger said that when it comes to magazine cover shoots, editors should do whatever it takes to make the cover model look her best. Even if that means changing her body digitally.

You can read (and see) more about this story here:

http://www.ralphehanson.com/2012/02/11/link-ch-5-–-beauty-size-age-part-iii-kelly-clarkson-self-magazine/

 

Magazines and Body Image: Is there in truth no beauty?

I have a wide range of posts on the blog dealing with magazines (and other media) and body image. You can find all of them here:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/tag/body-image/

You can give your students their choice of these posts or assign specific ones for them to read.

Questions:

• Is there any harm in magazines featuring extremely thin (in the case of women) or very muscular (in the case of men) models in their photos and advertisements?

• Do you think the images in fashion magazines contribute to the problem of eating disorders or steroid or supplement abuse? Why?

• What about the opposite? Ought magazines feature "realistically sized" models? Does this help or harm things? Why?

• Should magazines Photoshop models to make them look thinner?

NOTES: Traditionally, the concern about unrealistic body image has been connected with thinness, eating disorders, and young women. But more recently the debate has extended to the muscular, “ripped” image of young men. There have been charges made that unrealistic image presented in magazines and on television has led young men to use or abuse dietary supplements and steroids in their effort to achieve “the look.”

Censorship and Teen Magazines

Sometimes the truth can get magazines into as much trouble as faked letters or digitally altered photos. In 1998, a New York school district removed Seventeen, Teen, and YM from the middle school library in response to complaints by parents that the magazines contained inappropriate sexual material.[1] The superintendent said that he took the magazines out of the middle school library—but not the high school library—because the sex and health columns were not appropriate for children ages ten to fourteen.[2] According to the New York Times, the complaints focused on material about “having sex, using at-home pregnancy tests, taking the birth-control pill, vaginal discomfort, using a condom, masturbation, tampons, stretch marks, and worries about various body fluids and HIV.”[3]

Such incidents are rare, however. What is more common is for school districts to control the contents of student-produced publications. Such was the case in Grand Ledge, Michigan, where school officials removed information about Planned Parenthood and changed information about the state’s abortion law from a story about teen pregnancy scheduled to run in the high school magazine The Comets’ Tale.[4]

 

Race, Beauty, and Magazine Covers

Trisha Goddard is a black British talk show host who’s been described as a cross between Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey. American audiences may know her from the horror-comedy film Shaun of the Dead. She’s also the mother of two girls. In a commentary in London’s Daily Mail, she writes that she was startled in the summer of 2006 to see a black face (of R&B singer Jamelia) staring back at her from the cover of the British edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. “It took me a moment to realize why a simple photo of this beautiful girl had pulled me up short,” she writes. “Then I realized it was because I’m so unused to seeing a non-white face on the cover of a mainstream magazine.”¹

The implication of rarely seeing a woman of color on the cover of a magazine hit home to Goddard when her twelve-year-old daughter Madison said that she thought she looked ugly. What did Madison think a pretty girl looked like? “Well, she’s got a little upturned nose, and blonde or light brown hair, and blue eyes.” Goddard quickly realized that her daughter was describing a white girl.

Were editors being racist in using primarily white models on magazine covers? Goddard says no. Instead, she writes that magazine editors pick as cover models personalities who are well liked by readers. When the editors find black women who are popular with readers, the magazines sell well. The problem, according to the editor of British Cosmo, is that there are only a few black women who resonate with readers.

 

You can read more about Goddard here:

http://ralphehanson.com/blog/archive_09_02.html#021809_magazines

Classroom Debate On Truth One: Consumer Magazines

Do popular consumer magazines pander too much to advertisers? Do you have trouble telling the difference between advertisements and articles? Or doesn’t it matter as long as the advertising is interesting?

NOTES: This issue comes up repeatedly through the chapter, and is addressed again in Chapter 14: Media Ethics.

 

 

Who Are The Press?

This builds on segment from Chapter 1 on how SCOTUSblog showed up CNN and Fox News on the day the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. The discussion questions for this activity are scattered through the reading and links. You can find the blog post this is drawn from with all its links here:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2014/04/16/who-is-the-press/

 

One question that’s pretty hard to answer these days is “Who is a reporter?”

Is this someone who works for a newspaper? A television station? A radio network? Most folks would say, yes, these people are reporters.

But as I have mentioned before, among my Seven Truths They Don’t Want You To Know About the Media is Truth #2—There are no mainstream media (MSM). Of course we have big and small media; however, we use all kinds of media and our old legacy media hold no special status.

We saw this powerfully back in June of 2102 when both CNN and Fox News initially got the story wrong about the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. And both networks got it wrong in exactly the same way. In their effort to be the first to report it, both cable news networks initially reported that the court had overturned the individual mandate requirement that everyone purchase health insurance or pay a fine/tax because the court rejected the argument that this was justified by the commerce clause of the constitution. Except that that that Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion went on to say that the mandate could be justified under congress’s authority to levy taxes.

But you know who got it right? SCOTUSblog, a niche blog that typically drew a few thousand readers a day. As I wrote at the time,

SCOTUSblog was the authoritative news site that everyone turned to for immediate and accurate news about the decision. And on a day that several bigger web sites had trouble staying online because of heavy demand, SCOTUSblog had server capacity to spare despite drawing hundreds of times more traffic than normal.

So you would think that when the reporter from SCOTUSblog applied for a U.S. Senate press pass (something that is required to get a Supreme Court press pass), he was turned down. Why? It’s hard to tell, beyond a “We’ve never done it that way before” kind of argument.

Here’s a great update from SCOTUSblog on their quest for one of the best organizations covering the U.S. Supreme Court trying to get official recognition of their status as journalists.

Because credentialing the folks we all turn to for accurate information just seems like a good idea . . .

 

Classroom Debate on Secret Three: Mainstreaming

Few changes in journalistic practice have provoked the controversy that mainstreaming has. Should newspapers identify sources quoted in stories as being female or minority even if the source’s race or sex has no bearing on the story? Why or why not?

NOTES: This issue is likely to touch your students’ hot buttons. There are several key points students need to understand about mainstreaming:

• Mainstreaming is being done for marketing reasons. News organizations want their news to appeal to the public at large.
• Who counts? Who should count as a minority? Should gays and lesbians count? How about international residents?
• Should non-white, non-male sources be identified by their relevant characteristic, even if it’s not relevant to the story? Do you need to make sure that the public knows that the source is not a white male?
• Is or should diversity be a news value?

 

Sparking Debate on Secret Three: Authenticity

What makes an alternative paper authentic? Does a gay paper have to have a gay publisher or editor? Can a newspaper serving the African American community be owned by a white newspaper chain?

NOTES: An early draft of the first edition of this book featured the debate on authenticity between the gay-owned LGNY, and the straight media company that published the Blade News. But as was mentioned in the chapter, LGNY was bought out by a straight-owned company and had its name changed to Gay City News. During the writing of the third edition, the Washington Blade shut down when its parent company went bankrupt. By the time the fourth edition came out, the Blade was back publishing again. With the merger of media companies, and the movement of what used to be outside groups into the mainstream of society, the question of authenticity becomes more and more problematic.

 

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: Mash-ups and the Long Tail

The music industry is going through an enormous period of change right now with the rise of electronic music sales, peer-to-peer file sharing, and unsigned bands using the Internet to promote themselves. The key thing to remember as we go through this is that change is going to happen. It doesn't mean that the industry isn't right for resisting it, but it is going to change. 

One of the ways music creation and marketing is changing is through the work of mash-up and remix artists such as Girl Talk's Gregg Gillis who builds all of his music from unlicensed samples of work by other musicians. Make sure your students read the opening vignette about Gillis and Girl Talk in the book. You will also want them to review the section on hip-hop along with the material about the long tail from Chapter 3.

 

You have a couple of options for online readings to go with this discussion. You could have them go to the blog and read this post along with the links:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2011/05/24/meet-girl-talks-gregg-gillis/

 

Or you can use as many of the following readings as you wish:

• NPR's On The Media: They Say That I Stole This
  Audio story on how sampling is now a central part of musical culture. You can read a transcript of it if you want, but try to listen to the audio if at all possible.

• How Girl Talk Created All Day
  Girl Talk's most recent album All Day features as many as 400 separate musical clips. This link gives you a visual representation of how he assembled these clips into his new creation. Pick a couple of the sections from All Day and look at what went into them.

• Short Animated Film Based on Girl Talk's Bounce That
  This video was created by Professor Matthew Soar and his students at Concordia University in Montreal using rotoscoped video using a mash-up created by Gillis. This is an example of how the work that Gillis created out of the musical creations of others gets transformed into something yet again new.

• Girl Walk // All Day
  Watch a segment from the crowd-sourced dance film Girl Walk // All Day.

 

Questions:

• Do you listen to hip-hop or other sampled music?

• How does hip-hop style music differ from music in the past? How is it similar?

• Do you think samplers (such as Gillis or other hip-hop artists) are stealing from the musicians who created the sampled music? Why or why not?

• Are mash-ups original creations? Why or why not?

• Do we get a more interesting musical and creative world when we move beyond rigid ownership of music and art? Who gets hurt by this?

• Does it matter if the artist is rich or poor? Is there any precedence in history to support your position?

 

Sparking Debate: Amos ‘n’ Andy

The Golden Age radio show Amos ‘n’ Andy featured two white performers writing and portraying a host of African American characters. Did the fact that the stars were white and the characters black make the show racist? Why?

NOTES: You would be hard pressed to find more controversial material in this text than that relating to Amos ‘n’ Andy. The show was undoubtedly racist, drawing on stereotypes from the old minstrel shows. But the show was virtually the only program on radio that acknowledged that African Americans had lives, loves, and careers, even if they were being played by white actors.

You can listen to a sample of the radio show here:

http://www.otr.net/?p=amnd

 

Classroom Debate: Parental Warning Labels

Do the “Explicit Lyrics” warning labels on CDs help teens and parents control the music young people are listening to, or do they simply serve to make controversial CDs more attractive?

NOTES: The “Explicit Lyrics” label has had a wide-ranging influence on the music business. Many major retailers, Wal-Mart included, will not carry CDs that have the warning labels, and so bands end up releasing an edited version of their album along with the explicit version. Students need to understand that this is not censorship (which is imposed by the government), but a marketing decision made to maximize sales. This is similar to the requirements that most movie directors face when they are required to deliver a PG-13 or an R-rated cut of their movie as a part of their contract. It is also worth noting that the labels are not uniformly applied. For example, the Kronos Quartet (a string quartet that plays primarily modern serious music) recorded a musical setting of Alan Ginsburg’s poem “Howl.” The album does not carry an Explicit Lyrics sticker, despite featuring the “F word” used in a violent sexual sense.

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: Taking a second look at the Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is justifiably famous as a simple and effective way of considering the importance of the role of women in a movie, and I generally use the assignment listed earlier in this chapter with my students. But that doesn’t mean that the test is able to take a wider look at the presence of women in a movie. (Nor is it really intended to.) Here are a couple of blog posts that take an expanded look at the Bechdel Test in terms of what it tells us, and what it doesn’t.

 

Women and the Movies 2013—Bechdel Test Movies:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2014/01/03/2685/

As study in 2013 showed that the movies that passed the Bechdel Test did better as a whole than did movies that failed it.

 

Question: Why do you think that movies that passed the Bechdel Test tended to do better than those that didn’t? Is it coincidence, or is there something different about the movies?

 

Gravity shows the limits of the Bechdel Test:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/10/11/gravity-shows-the-limits-of-the-bechdel-test/

The movie Gravity, talked about in the opening vignette for the chapter, clearly doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test because there is only one woman in the movie. But it also has one of the strongest roles for a women for 2013.

 

Question: What do you think? As great as the Bechdel Test is as a casual tool for analyzing the role of women in movies, does it miss a lot of movies that have really strong roles for women?

 

The Mako Mori Test—An alternative to the Bechdel Test:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/08/21/the-mako-mori-test-an-alternative-to-the-bechdel-test/

The movie Pacific Rim, about giant fighting robots, does not pass the Bechdel Test, but it did have a major role for a woman with her own storyline.

 

Question: Should there be a way of analyzing films for whether they have a strong respect for their female lead as someone who is more than just window dressing?

 

NOTES: You find all my posts on the Bechdel Test here:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/tag/bechdel-test/

 

Classroom Debate on Secrets One and Five?Movie effects

Young people spend a lot of time at the movies. What sort of effects do you see them having on audience members? Do they give people behavior to copy? Styles to imitate? Catch phrases that become part of the common language? Look back at Chapter 2 in your text on the approaches to looking at media effects. What sort of approach do you see yourself and critics using when they look at media effects?

NOTES: As mentioned in Chapter 1, people with lower levels of media literacy typically view media content as having much more effect on other people and less effect on themselves. In Chapter 2, we discussed theories for media effects. This is a good opportunity for students to examine how they view media effects. While your students are likely to talk about big effects like violence, you may want to question them about smaller, and more likely effects such as fashion and ways of talking. I strongly believe that one of the most effective ways to talk with students about media effects is to cover them early in the semester and then keep coming back to them again and again with each media chapter.

Classroom Debate on Secret Six?Adult ratings

Are movies hurt by directors cutting scenes in order to get an “R” rating? Should there be an “A” rating that indicates that a movie is for adults only but is milder than a NC-17?

NOTES: This is a good opportunity for students to consider why movies are rated: Is it to provide consumers with guidance about the appropriateness of movie content or to protect the economic interests of movie producers? Would the movie industry want there to be a nonstigmatized adult rating? What would be the downside to the movie industry of having such a rating? It may be helpful to send students to the http://mpaa.org/ Web site for examples and explanations of how movies are rated.

 

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: Should a New York Times writer have called Shonda Rhimes an “angry black woman”?

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2014/10/17/link-ch-9-ny-times-draws-controversy-calling-shonda-rhimes-an-angry-black-woman/

Television producer/writer Shonda Rhimes is famous for her shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder.

A story about Rhimes in the New York Times started out provocatively:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/television/viola-davis-plays-shonda-rhimess-latest-tough-heroine.html?_r=0

When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.”

That opening line, and a story that went on to note that actress Viola Davis, who stars in Rhimes’ TV series How To Get Away With Murder, is “older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful” than Olivia Washington, who stars in another Rhimes show, Scandal.

A pair of lengthy articles from the New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan quotes extensively from reader criticism of the article, that she says is righty deserved.

Read the article and the two responses from the public editor so you can form your own opinion.

 

Questions: Does the writer, a white male, treat Rhimes the same way he would have treated a white male? What things are the critics sensitive about? How do you feel about how the author defends himself?

 

What is television?

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/11/01/what-is-television/

I recently asked my Global Media Literacy students a fairly simple question:

What is television?

The answers that came back were revealing, to say the least—a fascinating collection of both the retro and the ultramodern.

As you can see by the whiteboard photo on the blog post linked to above, the very first word that came to mind was “Box.” And by box, my student meant the big, old-style analog TV with a big ol’ picture tube. Literally, a giant box. But I think that’s informative—Television is seen as a device for consuming video from wherever it comes from.

After that came a couple of more use-based terms—entertainment and reruns.

But then came the one that really grabbed my attention:

 

“Moving pictures that you stream.”

And following that came the local cable company and satellite providers.

I don’t know that the student who said “stream” was really talking about Internet streaming; more likely, I think she was just talking about content that streamed in an unending flow to the television box.

Broadcasting didn’t get mentioned until one young lady Googled “television” and came up with the term broadcasting.

This launched us into a discussion of the history of television, moving from analog to digital, black and white to color, and the rise of alternatives to broadcast television. But what it came down to was that these young people saw radio as something that comes in over the airwaves.

This highlights what I think is a really important issue to think about—the young people in my class don’t distinguish between broadcast and cable or satellite channels. We have all sorts of legal distinctions between broadcast and cable or satellite, and even online streaming services. But to this group of young people, they’re all just television.

And that’s something we need understand going forward.

 

Classroom Debate?Television violence

What do you think of the Mean World Syndrome? How do you think you are influenced by television violence? What do you think the influence is on others?

NOTES: You will need to work to keep students on track with this discussion because they will likely move off into the direct effects model. It might be profitable to have students review Chapters 1 and 2 on the nature of media effects and the dimensions of media literacy. Understanding George Gerbner’s notion of the Mean World Syndrome (MWS) calls for a fairly high level of media literacy. The basic premises of the MWS are as follows:

Because of televised violence, heavy television viewers are more likely to:

• Overestimate their chances of experiencing violence.
• Believe that their neighborhoods are unsafe.
• State that fear of crime is a very serious personal problem.
• Assume that the crime rate is rising, regardless of the actual crime rate.

 

Gerbner writes that the real harm of violent television is not copycat behavior, but rather the following:

• Violent programming pushes aside other ways of portraying conflict.
• Violent programming deprives viewers of other choices.
• Violent programming facilitates the victim mentality.
• Violent programming discourages production of alternative programming.

 

Gerbner was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1919, but he left his home for the United States in 1939 to escape fascism. Upon arrival in the United States, he served in the U.S. Army to fight the Nazis. It would appear that at the heart of Gerbner’s concerns about television violence was the possibility that it could lead to a rise of fascism.

 

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: What are the mainstream media?

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/11/26/katie-couric-leaves-mainstream-media-for-mainstream-media/

 

Secret Two says there are no mainstream media, but it’s a term we hear batted about quite a bit. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the media business more mainstream that news anchor/personality Katie Couric. She represents everything that characterizes legacy media. She’s had interviews with all the big stars from Hollywood to DC. She’s a perky and likable guest we’re happy to bring into our house on a daily basis through the morning or evening television news.

 

If you talk about the mainstream media, you’re talking about folks like Ms. Couric.

And yet . . . in 2013, she announced that she was leaving ABC television to become the “global news anchor” for Yahoo! News. And so the big news is that Katie is leaving the mainstream media for the brave new world of online media!

 

Except . . .

As commentary and news site The Daily Beast points out,

• Yahoo and ABC are partners in a news site.
• Yahoo/ABC reaches 800 million people per month.
• Yahoo News was seen by ten million people on election night 2012.
• Couric is joining other big name journalists at Yahoo News, including Matt Bai, New York Times Magazine political correspondent; David Pogue, legendary New York Times technology columnist; and Megan Liberman, deputy editor of the New York Times.

Of course, exactly what Katie Couric is going to be doing for Yahoo isn’t completely clear. But according to an interview with Ad Age magazine, she will be doing video interviews and . . . “things that might be more appropriate for mobile devices . . .” In other words, she’s bringing her star power to Yahoo to help it be recognized as the mainstream power that it is.

 

This is a great example of Secret Two—There are no Mainstream Media.

• We have legacy media.
• We have big media.
• We have independent media.
• We have liberal media.
• We have conservative media.
• We have corporate media.

But I don’t know what would constitute mainstream media. Anything that can draw ten million pairs of eyeballs on one night seems no less mainstream than something that’s been around for seventy or eighty years.

So your question here is this: What do we mean when we talk about the mainstream media? And does the term have any meaning anymore?

 

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: Should Companies Fight Their Legal Battles Through Social Media?

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/05/24/should-breweries-fight-their-legal-battles-through-social-media/

I got a call not too long ago from a reporter in Kentucky asking my thoughts about whether it was wise for a pair of breweries—one local, one part of a large conglomerate—to be duking out their legal fight over trademarks via social media.

It was an interesting question, and not one that I had not given much thought to in the past. After all, attorneys generally tell their clients not to talk to the press and to stay quiet about their case on social media.

The best analysis I’ve seen of the case comes from the blog Drink With The Wench that focuses on issues surrounding craft beer—beer brewed by small independent breweries, as opposed to mass market beer brewed by big conglomerates.

The Beer Wench (her name, not my label) argues that smart breweries will keep their legal troubles in the lawyer’s office and out of the Facebook machine. She writes:

If you need justice, then by all means go and get it. But do it in a courtroom, NOT on Facebook and Twitter. Besides, I’m pretty sure that the judge making the final ruling over the case won’t be swayed by internet petitions or “how many followers and fans” you got to post on your behalf . . .

Because I refuse to get involved, I’m intentionally leaving the details of this particular “War of the Roses” out of this post. If you wish to learn more about the brewery vs. brewery conflict I’m referring to, you can read the House of Lancaster arguments here and the House of York arguments here.

I can think of one case where social media helped a man argue his case against an insurance company who he felt had wronged his sister who was killed in a car accident. With his Tumblr, Matt Fisher was trying to shame the company into doing the right thing rather than influence a court proceeding. Eventually Fisher got Progressive to settle with his family.

Questions: What do you think? Should people involved in lawsuits go public about their cases on social media?

 

Classroom Debate: The Hacker Ethic

What do you think about the hacker ethic? Should Internet users be able to post and use whatever information they want, even if it is protected by copyright? If “information wants to be free,” how do we compensate the people who create media content?

NOTES: Steven Levy’s book Hackers is a history of the development of personal computers. These hacker principles seem to have carried over from individual computing into networked computing. The issues that Levy laid out in his book, originally published in 1984, are the central problems facing the media business today:

• “Access to computers?and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works?should be unlimited and total.”
• “All information wants to be free.”
• “Mistrust authority?promote decentralization.”
• You should be judged by your skills and not by “bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.”

 

The hacker ethic perfectly describes how the World Wide Web came to be created and implemented. In fact, without these basic values, the Web as we know it might not have happened at all.

In general, you will find that your students will be very comfortable with the issues of how they ought to be able to use computer and media resources. How the creators of these resources ought to be compensated is something that they have a harder time coming to terms with.

 

Classroom Debate: Giving People Voice

Do you believe that the Internet gives ordinary people a chance to discuss their opinions with the world? Or is this expansion of free speech just an illusion where everyone talks and no one listens?

NOTES: If you have ever participated in an Internet discussion group, you may have observed that discussions will start out at a pretty high level. Then Chris will make a flippant remark. The flip remark results in Stan throwing back an insult, and before too long Chris and Stan are slamming each other’s parentage and everyone else is choosing sides. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the group is academic or business, young or old, male or female. Another thing you may notice is that a relatively small group of people will do most of the talking, and when anyone disagrees with the accepted wisdom of the group, they get shouted down. On the other hand, candidates during the last two presidential election cycles found great success mobilizing supporters and raising money through the Internet.

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: Cutting Through the Clutter?Diesel and Benetton

How does a small company with a limited advertising budget fight clutter? For the Italian clothing brand Diesel, the answer was to become aggressive to the point of what some might call “tastelessness.”

To stand out from the crowd, Diesel advertisements have broached the subjects of global warming, hostage taking, religion, plastic surgery, hard drugs, tobacco, lesbianism, communism, and cannibalism. Photos in Diesel’s magazine ads have featured a corporate board meeting attended by inflatable dolls, generals wearing diapers, “beefcake” men floating in test tubes for examination by aliens, and a “girl-roast” for a party of pigs. All the ads feature the Diesel logo in white type on a red block. The company has stretched its limited advertising budget by primarily using outrageously edgy print ads that stand out from the endless number of nearly identical fashion ads.

Company founder Renzo Rosso justifies his advertising strategy this way: “When we started out with our first worldwide advertising campaign in 1991, we hoped to create a dialogue with our customers. We had been watching most of the world’s advertising talking in monologues and we wanted to do it the other way round. We wanted people to think, to question, and to react.” 

Barry Avrich, president of the company that has handled Diesel’s Canadian advertising, defends Diesel’s controversial advertising. “If you can attach yourself in a non-superficial way to something that is getting a lot of ink then your campaign ends up being that much more powerful in terms of exposure and impressions. . . . I think Diesel wants debate and that’s what they have.” 

In the summer of 2010, Diesel won an Outdoor Grand Prix award at Cannes for its “Be Stupid” billboard and poster campaign. You can see images from and an analysis of the campaign at Creative Ad Awards:

• http://www.creativeadawards.com/diesel-be-stupid-advertising-campaign/

 

Few brands have done a better job of cutting through the clutter than Diesel. Of course, few advertisers have managed to have ads quite as controversial as the Diesel ads, either.

Benetton, another Italian clothing brand, has been even more controversial than Diesel, perhaps because it is somewhat better known. You can find a sampling of their ads here:

• http://www.creativeadawards.com/?s=benetton

You can see some more recent examples of cutting through the clutter here:

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2014/04/07/cutting-through-the-clutter-while-maintaining-brand-image/

Questions: How do you draw attention to your brand and yet still tell a story that promotes your brand? Can you attract bad attention with the wrong kinds of ads?

 

Classroom Debate on Secret One: The importance of brands

Brand name products have been around since the mid- to late-1800s, but they have exploded in importance during the last two decades. Even celebrities starting referring to themselves as “brands.” What products do you buy because of the brand? Do you buy Coke or Pepsi? Do you wear designer clothing? Mac or PC? Why do you think you or your friends buy name-brand shoes (think Nike)? Why do you choose your favorite brands? What do your favorite brands mean to you? Where do you get that meaning? Think about the varied IMC techniques that can be used to promote a brand.

NOTES: Branding and brand extension has long been important in the advertising business, but in recent years they have grown in impact. It is a central part of the modernization process through which we construct identities for ourselves. I discuss this in class by asking how many students have a visible brand on their clothing. After teasing them about their conformity, I go on to mention that every piece of clothing I am wearing that day comes from a certain catalog company, but of course, I am not influenced by brand image at all.

 

Classroom Debate: Should advertisers influence content?

When companies buy time on television or radio, or space in a newspaper or magazines, they are buying access to an audience that will see their advertisements. But advertisers often would like to control more than just their ads; they want to make sure that none of the material surrounding their ads will offend or drive off readers and viewers. Should advertisers expect to be able to control the programming and editorial matter that surrounds their ads? How far should media go in being “advertiser friendly”? What harm might come of pandering too strongly to advertisers?

NOTES: This issue is discussed at length in Chapter 14: Media Ethics, but I still wanted to bring it up in the advertising chapter. There is no question that advertisers have a right to choose which media they want to advertise in, whether it be Maxim, Good Housekeeping, National Geographic, the long-running animated show The Simpsons, the magazine show 60 Minutes, or a horror movie on the SyFy channel. The question becomes stickier when the advertiser wants to start dictating the content within the medium that their ad appears in. Media generally try to avoid placing ads by competitors in close proximity, and they will sometimes warn advertisers when they will have potentially controversial content.

 

Classroom Debate: What should be advertised?

While cigarette advertising has long been regulated by the federal government, many other controversial products can be advertised freely. But the media themselves oftentimes put restrictions on what ads they will accept. The Big Three television networks do not accept ads for contraceptives, including condoms. And while beer and wine ads are all over television, hard liquor ads have only recently started showing up with late-evening appearances on the networks (though they are all over cable). Are there legal products that should not be allowed to be advertised? If so, what are they? Is it more important to restrict television advertising than print ads? Why?

NOTES: This is a great opportunity to review the basic concepts of media literacy and media effects from Chapters 1 and 2, especially the belief that effects are generally stronger on others than on ourselves.

 

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION: Occupying the News

Public relations as a part of political activism involves telling your story honestly while making sure that your target publics understand and sympathize with your point of view. That’s what the Occupy Wall Street movement was trying to accomplish during the fall and early winter of 2011. How successful were the occupiers? The protestors who took over New York City’s Zuccotti Park wanted to draw attention to the divide in the United States between the wealthiest 1 percent of the population and the remaining “99 percent,” and they certainly attracted media coverage. But was this activism effective in creating an ongoing movement or leading to a change in public opinion?

History professor Michael Kazin told NPR’s On the Media that he saw Occupy as more of a protest campaign than a full-fledged movement: “For it to become a movement, it has to become organized, it has to have recognizable spokespeople. It has to have a strategy and not just a set of protest tactics.”¹ He went on to argue that liberal-leaning Occupy differed from the conservative Tea Party movement because the Tea Party was built on more than thirty years of conservative protests and organizing.

The flow of messages from the Occupiers took on a wide range of forms, including “the human microphone,” which had crowds repeating the words of speakers in locations where PA systems had been banned; creative, individually produced signs; and streaming cell phone video produced by people such as Occupier Tim Pool.

Pool’s work helps illustrate why the Occupiers had a hard time transmitting a unified message to their publics—not everyone wanted to send the same message. Pool streamed video from his mobile phone through his Ustream Internet video channel on Tuesday, November 15, 2011, the night police drove Occupiers out of Zuccotti Park. He was interested in presenting true transparency about the protests, and that meant showing the bad with the good. So when a group of masked protestors started letting the air out of a police van’s tires, Pool kept on streaming the video, even though the vandals tried to push him away. He told On the Media,

“I don’t care what the reason is; when we’re at something as pivotal, something as historic as that night, the camera’s not going off. Especially since we have a very large amount of people watching, and I have an obligation to those people to let them know what’s happening.”²

PR professional Leslie Gottlieb says the Occupiers were successful at making the message “We are the 99 percent” a popular phrase on social media, but that they were less successful at capitalizing on all the attention they were getting. As Gottlieb put it, “When you have the full attention of the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and all three major U.S. nightly TV newscasts, it is a game changer.”³

To find out more about the Occupy movement’s use of public relations, read the following link:

• Occupying Public Relations
  Make sure you pay attention to how members of the Occupy movement made use of public relations techniques to grab attention for their cause. Pay particular attention to how independent journalist Tim Pool brought attention to the movement using long-tail media.

After you have read the above, you are to discuss the following issues:

• Who were the Occupy protestors? What was their purpose?
• What message were the Occupiers trying to get across with their protests?
• What message was Tim Pool trying to transmit with his streaming video? Did the video streamed by Tim Pool help or hinder the cause?
• Were the Occupiers successful in presenting their messages to the various publics?
• How well did the Occupiers apply the principles of effective public relations?
• How would you judge the success of the Occupy movement? If you were going to give advice to the Occupiers on how to better communicate, what advice would you give them?

 

Classroom Debate: Responding to Rumors

False rumors can damage a company’s reputation, but responding to rumors can give the rumors legitimacy. Should companies and organizations respond to rumors circulating on the Internet? Why or why not?

NOTES: Knowing how to respond to rumors is an almost impossible problem for companies because they can’t afford to ignore them, but they also can’t afford to give them credibility. Here are several readings that deal with the “Starbucks Doesn’t Support the Troops” rumor:

• http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003599488_rumors04.html
• https://news.starbucks.com/views/myths-facts-military-donations
• http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/starbucks.asp

 

Free Speech and Students—The Hazelwood Decision

For a more complete analysis of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court decision, visit this guide located at the Student Press Law Center’s Web site:

 http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.getsnworks.com/spl/pdf/HazelwoodGuide.pdf

NOTES: When the Hazelwood was decided in 1988, high school students didn’t have any reasonable alternative for publishing a newspaper if the school’s official paper was shut down or censored. While students could certainly publish an “underground” paper, distributing it in school could be problematic. But with the advent of the Web, anyone who wants to can publish a small-scale alternative “newspaper” at very little cost. And as long as it is not produced using school resources, there is little school systems can do about it. Student journalists working on their own Web sites are still bound by privacy and libel law, however, which they may or may not have a good understanding of.

 

The Hazelwood Decision’s 25^th Anniversary

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/01/14/the-hazelwood-decisions-25th-anniversary/

 

Twenty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a high school principal in Hazelwood, Missouri, had the right to censor articles in the student newspaper about pregnancy and divorce. The court, in its ruling, wrote:

 

The First Amendment rights of students in the public schools are not automatically co-extensive with the rights of adults in other settings. . . . A school need not tolerate student speech that is inconsistent with its “basic educational mission,” even though the government could not censor similar speech outside the school.

 

The court essentially ruled that a high school student newspaper was a classroom exercise and not an instrument for free speech. The ruling went on to say that administrators could censor any content that is “reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns.” Or, as one first amendment attorney said at the time, “He can censor the paper because he wants to teach those kids a lesson.”

 

Geoff Campbell, who now teaches journalism and advertising at the University of Texas at Arlington, was a high school journalist in Missouri in the early 1980s, and he writes for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he had to continually battle with the school district’s superintendent over any article that had a whiff of controversy in it. He writes:

 

It was a stressful time. Teachers said things like, “You have constitutional rights. But what about responsibility, decency and good taste?”

 

We could have made people happy by confining ourselves to stories about AV Club bake sales, but that wouldn’t have made students more celibate or less pregnant. Unfortunately, discussion about those very real issues got hijacked by a censorship debate.

 

Katelynn McCollough, writing for the Iowa State Daily (my old college paper!), notes that the state of Iowa passed the “Student Exercise of Free Speech” law the year following the Hazelwood decision that gave Iowa high school students back their basic rights to free expression. The law did have some minor restrictions in it, but basically it said that Iowa believed that its students could handle their constitutional rights and responsibilities.

 

Questions: What do school districts gain by allowing students full free-speech rights? What do they lose? What do students learn about the constitution when they are censored by school administrators?

 

Classroom Debate: Celebrity Privacy

Movie, television and music stars all benefit from positive publicity, but they don’t like it when details about their private lives get printed or broadcast. Should celebrities have a right to be left alone by the press, or is living in a fishbowl the cost of fame?

NOTES: This can be a fun issue to debate. What many students don’t realize is that celebrities often have cordial “backstage” relationships with the tabloids in which they supply the tabs with photo opportunities or stories. But there are also the times when they would simply like to be left alone.

Classroom Debate: Telling The Truth

When journalists go undercover to report on a story, they often have to lie about who they are. Is it ever OK for journalists to lie to the people they are writing about? Why or why not?

NOTES: This is a problematic issue for journalists. If they lie to get a story, how will they convince the public that they are telling the truth when they give a report of what they found out while lying? These issues can also be discussed in Chapter 14: Media Ethics. That provides a nice contrast between what is legal to do and what is right to do. The Cohen case established that journalists are obliged to keep their promises. In the Food Lion case, the journalists technically lost, but they were only fined $2.

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION—Reporting and Truthfulness

In your textbook, we discuss the issues of reporters and truthfulness in a variety of contexts.

Here are some links that go with these readings:

 

• Pulitzer Prize winning story coauthored by Jose Antonio Vargas on the Virginia Tech massacre
• Profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for the New Yorker by Vargas
• Vargas outing himself as an undocumented immigrant in a first-person article for the New York Times Magazine
  In it, he tells the story of how he came to the United States as a twelve-year-old boy to live with his grandparents in Silicon Valley. He did not know that he had entered the country on forged papers until he took his supposed green card to the DMV at age sixteen to get his drivers permit, and was told that his card was fake and that he should not come back again.
• In an interview with Vargas on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Vargas explains he was supposed to work in shadow economy jobs until he could find an American citizen to marry and get a permanent residency permit that way. Only one problem: When Vargas was in high school, he came out publicly as being gay. So while he was out of the closet as a gay male, he remained secretive about his immigration status.
• The story of Vargas and his outing of himself has caused a fair amount of controversy in journalistic circles because Vargas has been lying about his immigration status for his entire adult life. (This link is to an audio story that also has a transcript. Listen if you can.) And lying is rather looked down on by journalists. Phil Bronstein, who had hired Vargas to write for the Chronicle, writes that he felt duped by Vargas, especially since Vargas wrote about the experiences of undocumented workers without mentioning that he was one himself.
• Read about the punking of Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker and then Arizona Senator Jan Brewer by alternative journalists. It contains links to the original source materials for your media literacy box.
• James O'Keefe and Political Activism Through Deception

 

All of this leaves us with this central ethical conflict: A journalist lying about his or her identity is always troubling for any reason. But if Vargas had not lied about who he was, he could not have been a reporter. (If you go to my blog, you will see some strong thoughts on the deception Vargas practiced from UNO journalism professor Chris Allen.) This is, at its core, the definition of an ethical problem. Because ethics are all about what you do when no answer seems right, when all answers are problematic, when telling the whole truth stands in the way of telling any truth.

So, after you have read this material, and Chapters 13 and 14, here are your discussion questions for this week:

 

• Was Vargas wrong to work as a journalist while concealing his immigration status? Could he have spoken out if he had revealed his status? What would we lose if we didn't have Vargas working as a reporter? What would we gain? Does the fact that he lied about his immigration status invalidate the work he did? What would you have done if you found yourself in his situation?
• Was it appropriate for Murphy and Koen to lie about who they were to create their satirical stories? Would it have been OK if they had been creating serious stories? How did the actions of Murphy and Koen differ from those of the ABC producers investigating Food Lion?
• Do journalists ever have the right to lie or be deceptive in their work? Support with examples from your readings or real life. (You are welcome to use examples other than those I provided.) I don't want pretend examples. Why or why not? When would it be acceptable?

 

Keep in mind this is a discussion about journalistic ethics and legality, not about what America's immigration policy should be. Obviously immigration policy comes into this discussion, but the journalistic behavior is at the core of this discussion. This is going to be a touchy topic that people will disagree on rather strongly. As long as we stay civil, this should be fine.

 

Classroom Debate: What Happens When People Get Offended by Celebrities

• http://www.ralphehanson.com/2013/12/19/what-happens-when-people-get-offended-by-pop-culture-stars/

In March of 2003, Natalie Maines of the popular country band The Dixie Chicks told a British concert audience

 “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

Immediately following these comments (made shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq), radio stations were pressured to stop playing the band’s songs, DJs who played their songs got fired, concerts were cancelled, and the band lost their corporate sponsors.

Members of the band also received numerous death threats.

President George W. Bush rightly noted that

“The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say . . . They shouldn’t have their feeling hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out . . . Freedom is a two-way street.”

 

In December of 2013, Phil Robertson of the popular reality show Duck Dynasty made some negative comments about homosexuality in an interview with GQ magazine. Among the most quoted is

“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

 

In response, the A&E network, which carries Duck Dynasty, announced that they were suspending Robertson from the show indefinitely. A statement from the network said

 

“We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series ‘Duck Dynasty. His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been supporters and champions of the LGBT community.”

 

Robertson got support from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (the show is filmed in Louisiana) and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Jindal said in a statement, “Phil Robertson and his family are great citizens of the State of Louisiana. The politically correct crowd is tolerant of all viewpoints, except those they disagree with.”

Questions: Should pop culture celebrities expect consequences when they speak out on controversial issues? Is it appropriate for media organizations to cut ties with celebrities when they say or do controversial things? What is the difference between censorship and consequences for being controversial?

 

Classroom Debate: Magazine letters

Are letters to magazine advice columns supposed to be real? Or is it enough that they deal with real problems? Should magazines run unsigned letters that may or may not be from real people?

NOTES: You might start discussion with your students as to whether they have any belief that the letters are true. If they don’t, does it matter whether they are real? Does it make the problem any less real if the editors combine several actual letters to create the one they run?

 

Classroom Debate: Manipulating public opinion

Public relations pioneers Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays both said that the goal of public relations should be manipulating public opinion in favor of their clients. As long as PR practitioners tell the truth, are there any ethical problems with attempting to manipulate public opinion? Why?

NOTES: The effort to persuade the public demands that PR professionals walk a fine line between serving their client and serving the public. How far can PR people go with this without breaking the boundaries? Clearly the PR firm should not write false materials for their clients. But must a PR professional stop a client from telling lies, even though the PR firm has nothing to do with the lies the client is telling? Must the PR firm verify the claims their clients are making?

VIDEO HINT: The BBC documentary, Counterfeit Coverage (The Cinema Guild in association with New Decade Productions, 1992), tells the story of Hill & Knowlton’s work for Citizens for a Free Kuwait. The documentary takes a fairly even-handed approach, and it would appear that the news media that used Hill & Knowlton’s materials is every bit as accountable for the deceptions as was Hill & Knowlton itself.