In a world where 98% of American households have at least one TV how can media literacy not be being taught in all schools? When only 25% of teenagers know where the United States constitution was written, but 75% of them can tell you where the zip code 90210 goes how can media literacy be left out of their education? In order to be literate in today�s world people need to be able to read, understand and critically analyze information in all its different forms. The media show people things they could never do and take people places they have never been and will never go. This is why media literacy is important. When educators leave out media education they are ignoring something that students spend more time with than their parents every day. Media literacy is an �antidote to manipulation and propaganda,� says Renee Hobbs a leading expert in media literacy. (Hobbs,1994) People need to understand that media includes fashion, toys, dolls, celebrities, and music, besides the traditional newspapers, magazines, television and movies; all of popular culture is media. And, all of it is constructed for a purpose, what is left out may be just as important as what is put in. All media use techniques to make you think and feel a certain way. Ads go mostly to the heart and the emotions of the group they are targeted at. The only part of the ad the goes to the mind is the name and type of the product. Knowing and realizing that the media are using these types of techniques is what helps a person start to become media literate. With that knowledge of technique, people can start to decide which messages the media send that they want to consider and which messages they want to reject.
The number of corporations that ultimately own most of the media we receive can be counted on one hand, and they do not only control one type of media, often they run several different types of it. �When the same corporations expand their control over many different kinds of media, they speak glowingly of providing richer public choices in news and entertainment. But the experience has been that the common control of different media makes those media more alike than ever,� says The Media Monopoly author, Ben Bagdikian. (Bagdikian, 2000, p. 7) Like the government almost all big businesses have Public Relations departments, whose job it is to get out all the positive news to the public. Much of what we see on the regular news programs comes directly from these departments. Because of the way it�s done, says Ben Bagdikian, �Even when the most blatant deterioration of news takes place the public has little power to force changes.� (Bagdikian, 2000, p.9) We are all examples of how the news effects people. How many people lock their car doors? How about their house doors? Is our world really that unsafe? Many people who watch the news think so. Everyday someone murdered someone else for money or because their husband was cheating on them or maybe it was a random break in and shooting. We see this every night on the six o�clock news and before we go to bed we lock our doors and hope it doesn�t happen to us. How much of this paranoia that we have is from personal experience and how much of it is from the news? Media literacy helps people understand that while this kind of thing does happen, it isn�t nearly as common as you would think from watching the news. Another thing to consider about the news we receive is that it is funded by advertisers and the first things to go in a news paper are the ads. The news comes second in a newspaper. Also, if Salem cigarettes has an ad in the USA Today and the paper wants to run a major feature on the hazards of smoking will Salem pull their ads from the paper? Chances are that the paper has an agreement with Salem not to run negative stories about smoking and the feature will be dropped. What does this say about the quality of news we receive? The more media literacy education kids get, the more people become media literate and the more we can stop things like this from happening.