So, Let's Watch Some Kids' News
From a participatory democracy perspective, we begin to see that what we introduced as a subtext to our original question: the issue of commercialism and education, now emerges as directly related to the central question of media, education and citizenship. In fact, we might reframe our original question to ask “What lessons does commercially produced news teach, particularly news produced to accomplish the commercial goals of organizing young people as a commodity and as a market, about the competing meanings of democracy and of citizenship?” Unlike the neo-liberal perspective of democracy and news, which sets aside commercial and news editorial questions, from the strong democracy perspective, these issues will need to be taken up as deeply interrelated. For instance, not only are advertisements seen as needing interpretation both as context and content bearing on values of democracy and citizenship, but the larger commercial logic of news coverage and production, needs to be reconsidered as carrying lessons regarding democratic and citizenship values.
Specifically, our attention is directed toward the following questions:
- What lessons are taught, direct and implicit, with respect to individual verses collective action? Here we will need to take into account not only representations of action, but also of individualism and celebrity.
- What lessons are taught, direct and implicit, with respect to the relationship between democracy and the market? Here we will need to take into account the representations of choice, of freedom.
- What lessons are taught, direct and implicit, with respect to knowledge as science/facts verses as the outcome of debate/deliberation? Here we need to take into account the general mythology of science as knowledge.
- What citizenship lessons are taught by Channel One, direct and implicit, with respect to the relationship between democracy and the market? Here we will need to take into account the representations of choice, of freedom, and the idea of the “public.”
With these questions in mind we turned an examination of the programming on Channel One and CNN Newsroom for the week of November 29—December 3, 1999.
From this list of questions, we could clearly draw out a number of specific issues to examine these news programs for school children. The four we focused on reflected what we believed was both the highest priority issues within the list, as well as the dominant focus of the news programs themselves. They included: Representations of the self; Representations of activism; Representations of critical deliberation and; Representations of the relationship between the "free market" and "democracy." These representations are explored in terms of program structure, in terms of themes that cut across programs and stories, and in terms of specific story content.
Channel One
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Representations of the Self: Radical Individualism verses Social Interdependence
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To watch Channel One looking for clues as to its representation of how we should think about individualism, is like standing next to a cannon which has just been fired and asking where is the sound. The first and foremost clue is the show itself, which nearly stuns one with its relentless repetition in graphics, slogans, and camera work of the program's theme "The Power of One." The only set of images that I could image that even began to come close with the relentless fascination with the images of "oneness" portrayed in the week's worth of episodes that I viewed was Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will."
Each episode begins with a still shot of original art work created by a student viewer which in someway incorporates the Channel One logo focusing on the number "1" --- so the viewer sees "1's" flying around a fairy or a dragon wrapped around "1" or fish swimming around "1" or "1" against an abstract background. Art in the service of and intertwined with Channel "oneness."
Nearly every graphic contains the Channel One logo. And when the program cuts to the studio to allow the anchors to welcome the viewers and introduce the program for the day, the shot almost always begins with a close-up of the Channel One logo "1" on a television monitor in the studio or returns to the "1" at the end of a long establishing shot or both. Typically there are anywhere between three to six monitors all displaying the "1" logo in the background of all studio shots. Almost always when a teen anchor is speaking, a logo "1" appears on a monitor in the immediate background or if there are two anchors conversing, between them. And if the camera does not its shot on a logo "1" on a monitor, it pulls away, and dollies up to reveal a huge logo "1" on the studio floor.
"The Power of One" theme is also drawn on to define program segments, where the "news" to follow is framed within the "Power of One" ideology. And the "1" logo is appropriately adjusted and redesigned to define a particular program theme, such as tying a red ribbon around the "1" in honor of World Aids Day.
The omnipresent logo "1" throughout the program on the monitors and floor is interspersed with "Power of One" music video montages which might include heroic individuals (sometimes thematically presented such as pilots and astronauts) or computer graphic simulations representing futuristic or science fantasy settings. Always celebrating "1" or the "Power of One." It is also interesting to note that when one examines the "Power of One" montages along side of the advertising content in the regularly repeated United States Marine ad, "The Few, The Proud, The Marines," an ad that features a single, young muscular man catapulted into what looks like a dungeons and dragons video game, where he slays a techno-dragon with a techno-sword, there is no sense of discontinuity. The computer graphics, the science-fantasy, the "Power of One" theme are near seamless from program to advertisement. It should also be noted that the new theme for the U.S. Army recruitment campaign, "Be an Army of One," would fit equally well.
At the same time this blatant surface celebration of libertarian radical individualism is developed somewhat more subtly using additional structural techniques, as well as through theme and content.
Structurally, the format of the program blends the news anchor form with the news host or talk show host form, creating anchors that communicate informality and accessibility, with scientific omniscience and celebrity. These anchors, as in conventional news, magazine news, and the talk shows, provide a familiar, continuous human focus—an anchor, which encourages identification with their celebrity personalities rather than the discontinuous, fragmented and oftentimes disturbing "news". In addition, viewers are constantly directly addressed by the anchors to think about how they would "feel" about a news item or story, encouraging the viewers to adopt a self-centered, individualized frame of reference.
The theme of radical individualism is substantially carried through this celebrity discourse. The celebrity anchors literally stand for the power of "oneness." And the theme of celebrity, of having achieved a meaningful identity through hyper-individualism, a kind of transcendent state of being, is developed continuously in the program in a variety of ways—ways that cut seamlessly across the "editorial" and "advertising" segments of the program. Consider a few quick examples.
In the Marines ad, the virile, clean cut young man has to cross a bridge
of light which is protected by a dragon. Shots of him dueling with the
dragon are framed from the point of view of the enslaved masses waiting
to be freed. After he triumphs, he is magically clothed in a dress Marine
uniform, while a filled stadium of onlookers cheers his hyper-individual
accomplishments.
The Clearasil ad begins with a featured model holding her hands in a frame
around her face, both indicating she is to be looked at, celebrity style,
and she is framing your face, the viewer and possible celebrity, to be
looked at. Clearasil leads to her triumphant moment of being kissed by
two boys simultaneously.
Celebrity is a repeated theme in the regularly repeated Pepsi commercials. In one commercial a black male celebrity in a limosine pulls over to hand the thirsty group of boys in the desert, bottles of soda, which he calls "a lift." In a second Pepsi ad, the celebrity in the limosine is a woman who hands the boys bottles of soda, offering to "share her joy." In a third Pepsi ad, the famous Pepsi girl, who literally takes on celebrity persona after celebrity persona in the series of ads she appears in, takes on the personna of an older, hip black male dj.
In the Schick Silk Effects ad the young woman explains "when you
live guys, you learn all kinds of things…." What she has clearly
learned, by the last scene is to dress to kill, and to be the featured,
celebrity-style, object of the boys’ attention.
In the Polaraid JoyCam ad being looked at and photographed is presented
as a critical element of teenage play, with the camera finally being turned
on the viewer in the last scene, in a kind of offer to "join us"
and be looked at and photographed.
Certainly these are all examples drawn from the ads embedded in the CH1
programming and yet, the aura of celebrity and the central importance
of looking, being looked at, and camera play are in no way out of place
in relationship to the representations of the CH1 celebrity anchors.
But celebrity is also a critical dimension of the "news" stories themselves—not so much that the stories are about celebrities, but the idea that the idea of celebrity is presented as the pinnacle of achievement. Consider for instance, the profile for World Aids Day of a fifteen year-old girl who has been an aids activist since she was five.
She is introduced in a video montage that would make a supermodel blush, a music video montage of fast-cuts of magazine covers and magazine stories that have highlighted her work and accomplishments. A key frame for the story is her appearance at the "Essence Awards" to receive a special award recognizing her work. In this frame she is dressed in designer evening gown addressing a celebrity crowd and receiving celebrity like adulation. The story even refers to her as a "celebrity."
In this week's worth of episodes, we also find a segment that introduces "student produced week" where viewers are invited to submit applications to fill a wide range of positions. Again the framing of this segment makes a significant comment on both the program's radical individualism and on celebrity. Three of the celebrity anchors join forces to tell viewers that even though they are all unique, what they secretly share in common is that they achieve their anchor status, by first appearing on the show guest anchors during a previous "student produced week." This segment can be viewed as accomplishing several dimensions of "celebrity" work. It can be seen as simultaneously reinforcing their celebrity status as having been chosen from among the multitudes for their positions, making the assumption that the viewers want to be like them, and heightening viewer identification with them by offering symbolic access to them and to their status through the possibility of becoming part of student produced week and of the show itself.
This segment, which can be understood in relationship to the program’s insistent focus on "oneness" also provides an opportunity to consider how the show handles the relationship between "radical individualism" and "belongingness" or social interdependence. Clearly in the "student produced week" segment, celebrity is offered up as both the height of "radical individualism" as well as an exclusive club made up of radical individuals.
When we turn to the question of belonging and begin to look for instances
of belonging across the episodes, what becomes clear is that the first
and foremost form of belonging is to belong to the Channel One team or
club or cult. Almost everything that happens on the show is primarily
a vehicle for developing the relationships between the anchors, and vicariously
between the viewers and the anchors. Consider, for instance how the extended
on-location coverage of the new peace accords in Ireland is summarized
by one anchor as "what a great experience" for the anchor who
went to Northern Ireland to cover the story.
When other images of "belonging" show up, we see that they are
quickly distinguished into "good" belonging and "bad"
belonging.
Interestingly enough, good belonging has two seemingly antithetical dimensions: a "tribal" kind of belonging and a "scientific brotherhood" kind of belonging. The kinship of tribal belonging is clearly the belongingness of the celebrity anchors, but it is also spread throughout the advertising messages. From the Silk Effects girl living "with guys" to the Pepsi girl as hip black dj bringing a town together through music to the group of boys in the Pepsi ads that journey from car cruising to being stranded in the desert to back slapping each other over their good fortune of encountering a celebrity in the desert bearing soda to the carnivalesque JoyCam ads where young adults in a frenzy of joy, dance around poles, jump into a swimming pool and even parody a tribal dance in the swimming pool wearing not primitive but science-fiction masks.
Good belongingness along the lines of "scientific brotherhood" emerges primarily in news stories where science as a team effort marked by consensus is constantly reinforced by regularly refering to scientists in the plural, by citing scientists as speaking together as in "scientists say", by calling attention to international cooperation among scientists, and by using phrases like "working together."
When the context of the conversation switches from commercials and science to politics, there is a dramatic shift in the image of belonging. To belong to the group of protestors in the story on the WTO or the groups involved in the protest against British rule of Ireland and Northern Ireland is to become linked to chaos and violence. In the domain of politics, good groups are officially sanctioned groups. Bad groups are those that challenge the established order.
Representations of Activism
To examine how activism is represented in Channel One programming, we can look at how activism is explicitly and implicitly defined in the news content, what kinds of activities are presented as legitimate or appropriate political action, and the value of individual vs, collective action.
Activism Defined
The events of the last week of November1999—including World AIDS
Day, the historic shift of power in Northern Ireland, the Word Trade Organization's
Ministerial meeting in Seattle, and the dramatic high-seas rescue of Cuban
refugee Elian Gonzalez—provide a wealth of potential lessons about
national and global politics, and citizens' role in the political process.
In presenting its version of these events, what kinds of representations
of engaged citizen action does Channel One construct? At the most basic
level, we might ask simply who is an activist and how is activism defined?
In the news programming aired during the week, only person in any Channel
One story is identified as an activist: fifteen year-old Hydeia ??, who
is introduced as "an AIDS awareness activist on a mission to save
lives." As we travel with CH1 to Seattle on December 2 to witness
the aftermath of massive demonstrations against the WTO, we are presented
with a montage of images of citizens marching, chanting, singing, carrying
banners—all sights, sounds, and behaviors we might associate with
street-level activism—while teen anchor Gotham Chopra (who was not
alive during the youth movements of the 1960s) rhetorically links the
action in Seattle to anti-Vietnam War activism. Yet, while participants
in the WTO mobilization are referred to seven times as "protesters"
and identified four times as "demonstrators," they, unlike Hydeia,
are never labeled "activists." Similarly, in the Northern Ireland
story all traces of "activists" and "activism" have
been entirely erased. In the cursory history of the struggle in the region
constructed by Channel One, activists do not play a role on either side.
The source of the conflict is "hatred" and "violence"
of an unspecified nature
What definition of activism emerges when we read this week's worth of
programming? We could infer a definition based on what Channel One says
activism is: In the case of the AIDS activist, it is the work of one remarkable
individual (a "small voice with a big message" demonstrating
how "the power of one voice is ringing out to save lives") using
her celebrity status to reach people and "spread knowledge."
Or we might define activism based on what, according to Channel One, it is not: Protesting or participating in a demonstration, for example, is not identified as activism. In keeping with most media coverage of the spectacle over the substance of the protests, participants in the WTO mobilization were defined in terms of the event, not the issues they brought to the discussion. Channel One’s presentation of the story disconnects the activists who came to Seattle from their ongoing work on various struggles and narrowly categorizes them based on their activities on November 30. So participants were not environmental, labor, or human rights activists, but simply an undifferentiated mass called "demonstrators."
Acting Appropriately
Taking a step back and locating activism within the larger context of engaged political participation, what lessons might these representations teach about active citizenship? Specifically, we can ask who (according to Channel One) can be politically active, and when is action appropriate? Who can have influence over the political realm, and how should that influence be wielded?
Several direct and implicit lessons emerge when we read this week's programming. We learn, for example, that appropriate political action does not take place in the streets, but (in the case of AIDS activism) at school assemblies and celebrity events like the Essence Awards. It does not involve banners, chanting or slogans, it does not call for action (beyond personal action), and it does not make any demands. Unlike other AIDS activists, for example, Hydeia does for not make appeals for more money for AIDS research, better access to affordable treatment, more or better prevention programs etc. And appropriate political activity most certainly is not militant action or armed struggle (as in the case of "violence" in Seattle or the conflict in Ireland).
Instead, legitimate, appropriate, and effective political action is undertaken by celebrities and political elites. In the AIDS story, Hydeia ?? is credible and effective because like a "movie star or singer" she has "magazine covers, autographs, and too many awards to display." And in Northern Ireland, political change is credited to the intervention of U.S. Senator George Mitchell and the decision for leaders on both sides to come to the negotiating table to craft an agreeable settlement. Citizen action or participation is not part of the equation. This message is most clearly communicated in the WTO story, where "political and business leaders from around the world" provide all of the answers to the problems of globalization and "free trade."
Citizen empowerment—taking matters into one's own hands through some sort of direct political engagement—stands firmly outside of the realm of appropriate political action. Citizens demanding that their voices be heard outside the WTO conference are condemned for causing a "disturbance" and "unrest," thus leading police to (justifiably) "crack down" and take a "harder line with protesters." The visuals from Seattle show in graphic detail the consequences of unauthorized citizen empowerment: shattered storefront windows at downtown corporate mega-chains, flaming dumpsters in the street, young people openly defiant of authority. The message: too much citizen participation is a dangerous thing. Similarly, militant action on both sides of the Northern Ireland conflict is described only as "countless acts of violence" without any explanation of the politics driving the use of extreme tactics
In each case, the lesson for the young citizens who watch Channel One is that many social/political problems are beyond their control. "Problems" that can be "solved" will be addressed by elites through appropriate official channels (or will take care of itself through the glories of the "free" market); those that somehow defy any solution must simply be passively accepted.
Individual vs. Collective Action
The representations of activism found in this week's programming suggest that effective political participation ought to take the form not of collective action directed at structural change, but individual efforts that encourage highly individualistic "solutions." The lesson for student viewers is that you don't achieve political efficacy by joining with fellow citizens to collectively address problems or effect change; instead, we learn that we ought to put our faith in celebrities and political elites, the market, or science—not ourselves or each other—to solve problems. The young AIDS activist, as noted above, epitomizes the idea of the "Power of One": while activism typically isn't though of as a solitary pursuit, there is no evidence in the story to suggest that she is part of any sort of AIDS awareness community. There is, apparently, no Hydeia [last name] foundation, nor does her profile suggest that she is affiliated with any other organizations or activists. Rather than depicting her working with others to address one of the world's most serious public health crises, Channel One takes us into her bedroom, inviting us to see her as a private individual working on a one-woman campaign.
We would expect to see just the opposite in Seattle, where we find 50,000 people engaged in collective mass action. Yet when we see protesters up close we get a very different picture: Channel One presents a series of quick cuts between interviews with individual, unnamed protesters who are allowed no more than a sentence or two to describe their personal "issue" with the WTO. No attempt is make to establish links between the various issues or between the participants. Demonstrators are presented as disconnected individuals with discrete agendas. Amazingly, despite the covergence of hundreds of well-known and readily identifiable activist groups in Seattle, not a single organization is mentioned in the story. Any sense of consensus or coalition—arguably the defining features of the Seattle protests—is completely erased.
So when, if ever, is collective action appropriate? The examples in Channel
One news content featuring young citizens working collectively are all
found outside of the traditional political arena. In the "Get a Job"
piece, for example, we see students working together to help their classmates
find holiday jobs. Or in story about the restoration of the Italian cathedral,
volunteers join forces to help restore earthquake-damaged frescoes—both
to recreate a lost work of art, and to bring back the tourists and their
money. Interestingly, (as noted in the section on “belongingness”
above) it is in the advertisements that we see the most images of young
people working (or playing, or more importantly, consuming) together.Critical
Deliberation verses Fate (?)
To examine the contribution of these Channel One programs to the task
of critical deliberation central to a participatory idea of democracy,
we can look at representations of what counts as knowledge, the process
of deliberation vs. fate, and the criteria of evaluation.
[Now it may seem strange to look at a recruitment ad for the Marines or a Silk Effects ads for lessons that they teach regarding critical deliberation as an act of citizenship. ]
What is knowledge?
Perhaps the most consistent message student viewers get about what knowledge
means, according to Channel One programming, is that there are two kinds
of knowledge: Adult knowledge and kids’ knowledge. Let's look at
both.
Adult knowledge is fragmented, disconnected, oftentimes grim, has to do
with lots of jumbled together numbers, is not subject to debate or challenge,
and is mostly absurd. How is this communicated?
On the surface, Channel One offers a an extremely clear model of a neo-liberal idea of knowledge: fact-based and compartmentalized—some might say, fragmented and disjointed. Each day the opening headlines summarize three events in extremely compressed, decontextualized sentences. These "headline" stories are not returned to in the program and may or may not be addresed later in the week. They stand as near meaningless bulletins which the viewer is encouraged to understand as important enough to have heard of, but not important enough to know about in any detail or depth. From the headlines each episode turns to a quote for the day, again typically decontextualized, with no necessary connection to the stories that follow.
If a student viewer attempts to follow whatever complexity or contextualization is offered in a story, such as the Italian art restoration story or the WTO protest story, they are rebuffed for their efforts when each story turns to the Pop Quiz segment. For instance the art restoration story is reduced in the pop quiz to a multiple choice question on "what is a fresco?" The WTO protest story is reduced to the multiple choice question "Where is Seattle?"
The message that adult knowledge is decontextualized, irrelevant knowledge, is particularly well illustrated by a news story on solar flares which could potentially disrupt telecommunication systems on earth. After a mini-documentary on what a solar flare is, and a video montage including lots of images of satellites, spaceships, astronauts and images of extraterrestial objects, the segment moves to the pop quiz.
This pop quiz question is to be delivered by a guest to the show, a teacher whose class won a previous CH1 midterm exam contest. The teacher, a heavy set middle-age woman, is essentially forklifted onto the set, sitting on a small stool suspended above the ground. From this awkward perch, the teacher poses the pop quiz question "How many earths would fit in the base of a solar flare?" Not only is the question irrelevant to the story, irrelevant in terms of issues such as our increasing social and economic dependence on communication technology and the potential impacts of disruptions to these systems, it is also irrelevant to the effort made in the story to connect it, in a self-centered and individualistic way (solar flares might disrupt the use of pagers and cell phones), but an effort, never-the-less to connect it to the lives of the young viewers. The teacher is made to look absurd and the invented math problem, simply requires the formulaic manipulation of meaningless numbers to arrive at a meaningless result.
Adult knowledge is absurd, authoritarian and irrelevant.
Kid knowledge, mostly available through commercials, on the other hand, is rich with relevant, useful information. It delivers on knowledge about how to present oneself (Clearasil), how to negotiate relationships with the opposite sex (Clearasil, Pepsi, Silk Effects), and how to achieve power and esteem (Marines, JoyCam). It also validates one's experience as the basis for active knowledge. And perhaps most importantly, it communicates how kid knowledge can be used to challenge and even defeat authority, authoritarian knowledge, and adult knowledge. It is also a world where kids are not controlled by scientific knowledge and authority, but draw on this knowledge to empower themselves.
Consider, for instance, in the Marine ad, how kid knowledge, knowledge
based on good looks, computer game literacy, and physical prowess is used
to defeat evil—and evil which is part machine and part monster. In
the Silk Effects ad, authority of adults is challenged by "living
with guys" and the authority of guys is challenged by physically
fighting for territory and finally asserting the right to be a sexual
object. Or consider the JoyCam ad where young people control technology
(the high tech camera) for their own authority-challenging purposes—which
have to do with sensuality, wild abandon, and a heightened sense of identity.
This sensual, emotional, individual idea of knowledge is also evoked in
the news but not in as nearly a positive context. For instance, when a
Channel One reporter went to Northern Ireland to report on the status
of a new peace accord, she interviewed a number of young people. The knowledge
she elicited was primarily about feelings, emotions and individual reactions.
And these feelings and emotions, unlike the ads, focused the interviewees
attention on fear, loss and helplessness.
Knowledge as endless numbers and meaningless facts that must be learned
by rote in the service of authority verses knowledge as the experience
of the body in the service of sensual liberation, where the truth of kid
knowledge is established not by distant experts, but by the judgement
of the "tribe" of friends and relationships.
Perhaps the most significant statement about the value of adult knowledge comes in the format of the midterm exam contest, where the categories for competition are "who, what, when, where or whatever." In this standard list of the five "W's" of journalism, the last "w", the "why" of events that probes their meaning and context is replaced with the ironic, detached coolness of "whatever."
The Process of Deliberation
When we read this week's worth of Channel One programming, searching for examples which modeled the act of deliberation or actually invited deliberation, the first lesson that becomes clear is: Almost no thinking is required. And certainly no critical evaluation.
In the few rare examples where student viewers are invited to think,
such as when each program opens with headlines of the day, or the pop
quiz is presented, the primary message is less about thinking than about
the importance of speed. While the headlines are still framed, a small
graphic in the lower corner counts down the seconds; at the end of the
reading of each pop quiz question—a question that with only one exception,
required only rote memorization—the anchor announces "take ten"
and a new countdown graphic begins. The idea of speed in general and speed
in thinking or acting without thinking is a theme that is interwoven across
the programming. For instance, in the Pokemon commercial, the safari guide
tells his clients who are bumping along in the backseat of the SUV, "Today's
assignment: photograph the elusive pokeman…you've got to be fast!"
In the news story on the human genome project, a featured scientist explains
the value of the work as "… this is a dream come true for the
gene disease hunter…." because it will make the search for key
genes ""dramatically more efficient and rapid."
In the few instances where the programming actually invites the student
viewer to think, it is to think only in terms of feelings, not to think
logically or rationally—and definitely not to think in terms that
would evaluate the quality of information under consideration, the credibility
of sources or the logic of an argument. In the one moment where the "news"
program asks student viewers to think beyond memorization or feelings
(the solar flare math problem mentioned above), the idea of thinking is
literally reduced to the idea of calculation. At the same time, in the
introduction to the segment on solar flares, the anchor, after introducing
the segment in a provocatively ambiguous manner, says, "if you think
I'm talking about Y2K, you're wrong." Even the rare use of the word
"think" is invoked only to let the viewer know that to "think"
is to be a sucker.
Again looking over the week's worth of programming searching for examples which modeled the act of deliberation or actually invite deliberation, a second lesson also became clear: The reason acts of deliberation are so hard to find was that in the structure of both the news and the commercials, the story is almost always presented as taking place after a decision had been made. The question is not still pending, still open to reflection. The question is not still up in the air. The debate is over. All that is left for young people, is either to passively react (which is the predominant mode of telling the news) or act without thinking, impulsively (which is the predominant theme of the advertisements).
The only people that are portrayed or referred to as decision-makers or individuals engaged in deliberation are business and political elites. In the WTO protest story, the protesters are introduced as "demanding that their voices be heard."
The WTO representatives are introduced as "political and business leaders from around the world, whose decisions could affect millions of people." In the Northern Ireland story, after the standard montage showing random acts of violence and images of soldiers attempting to control the situation, the story cuts away to a low-angled shot of an imposing and formal government building, and then to a shot of largely older, white men gathering around a conference table with the voice over, "leaders from both sides got together to form a government…." Even in the WTO protest story where it would have appeared that as story was very much in the making, the anchor clearly and forcefully and with graphics explains the few basic facts that "to understand all this you have to know."
In this Channel One world where thinking is mostly not allowed and where most decisions have already been made, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising how prominently magic realism comes to play a role in both news and advertisements. Consider, the magical intervention of the celebrities in the limosines in the desert to solve the problem of the young mens' thirst, or the Silk Effects razor that shifts the balance of power in the battle of the sexes in the favor of the young woman, or the ability of the young white Pepsi girl to take on the personna of the black DJ, or the JoyCam's ability to transform an everyday pool party into a carnival of sensual abandon. Or consider in the "news" stories where the anchor introduces the Northern Ireland story with "In Northern Ireland this week a lot of people are having to pinch themselves to know that they aren't dreaming…" or the scientist mentioned above who refers to the work of the human genome project as "a dream come true" or in the Cuba story that begins with the premise that "Elian Gonzalez is lucky to be alive…". Luck and magic replace deliberation and action, in a world where human consideration, reflection and agency appear to have little impact. Or as another scientist reminded the student viewers in the solar flare story, "we can't do anything about it, we can't do much to influence the sun."
And yet science is presented as both impotent in the face of nature and capable of god-like intervention, as in the case of the human genome project, in the control and redesign of nature. However in both cases, science is offered up primarily as an act of discovery not debateable social policy. And since science only discovers what nature has made, the idea that there might be debate or challenge to the priorities of scientific research or applications is presented as, again, outside the realm of critical deliberaton.
As the act of deliberation, of critical reflection is portrayed as meaningless calculation or hopeless in the face of foregone conclusions or outside of the realm of average young people and average adults, the world of impulsive action and magical intervention would appear to make increasingly good sense.
Criteria of Evaluation
Given the lack of examples of deliberation and given the overriding tone of foreclosed debate, it may seem silly to even raise the question as to what criteria are invoked for evaluating alternative courses of action or competing positions. for decision making to be made, evaluation to be undertaken. However, these criteria are not entirely absent, they are just difficult to see because they are the taken-for-granted values which are assumed to have operated in determining whatever course of action was to be taken in the first place.
For instance, in the Elian story, Elian's flight with his mother is understood
to be motived by a desire for freedom. The meaning of freedom is not opened
up to or subjected to debate. Although, the news story implies that first
and foremost "freedom" means just "not-Cuban." Although
on occasion this high level of abstraction is reduced to concrete examples
of what "freedom" or the lack of "freedom" means,
as when a CH1 anchor interviews some Cuban-American teenagers now living
in Miami. For them the lack of "freedom" means "there wasn't
much to do." Interestingly enough, when we skip over to Northern
Ireland, that "news" segment, in exploring the meaning of the
long drawn out civil war and the lack of peace, was able to come up with
nearly the same lament among Northern Irish teenagers. The lack of "peace"
meant it was hard to find places to "hang out."
Criteria tend to be vague abstracts like "freedom," "peace,'
"democracy," and "law and order" which tend not to
be immediately visible and certainly not open to discussion or debate
about their meaning or application. When abstract values are given some
concrete manifestation, it is typically in the form of emotional or sensual
feelings.
A case like the Marine ad illustrates, in an exaggerated form, the extent to which actual meaning of abstract values remains largely irrelevant. In the Marine ad there is only good and evil, the basis of "goodness" is entirely blank, appearing to be mostly associated with allegiance to the United States. The basis of evil seems only to have vaguely to do with monsters, enslavement and rusty machines.
Evaluation of alternative courses of action or positions is primarily constructed around how it feels to oneself, it is never based on issues of process about who is included or excluded from the decision making or on the consequences of alternatives to other people or ecosystems. Even in the WTO protest story, which provides visual illustrations of charges of injustice and exploitation against multinational corporations by the activists, the overall story itself is framed by and closed by a primary consideration as to whether the activists are behaving in a legal and orderly manner.
Perhaps not surprisingly in the commercial world of the Channel One programming, decisions are made, or appear to have been made, in the interests of individual emotion and physical satisfaction. At the same time, it is also clear that "tribal allegiance" is a critical criteria, whether in choosing to be part of the pool side carnival, the Pepsi community of music, the Cuban-American community, or the missed opportunity of belonging to the world of celebrity elites who cruise through the desert in their limonsines looking for others to share their colas with. Judgements based on a grounded sense of social and political justice, ethical responsibility within a democratic community, etc. are not on the map.
"Free Market" Ideology vs. Democracy
What citizenship lessons are taught by Channel One, direct and implicit, with respect to the relationship between democracy and the market? Here we will need to take into account the representations of choice, of freedom, and the idea of the "public". At the same time we will need to consider the ways in which both journalism and education are represented as institutions connected to the practice of democracy. And, of course, we will have to keep in the forefront of our analysis the recognition that there are several meanings to democracy itself.
"Free market" capitalism is set in opposition to democratic values in Channel One programming, but instead of democracy prevailing, capitalist ideology does. To deconstruct these discourses, it is necessary to discus what constitutes free market ideology and democratic ideology. To grossly oversimplify, "free market" capitalism is considered by its proponents (classical economists, neoliberals, mainstream scientists, etc.) to be a rational, system in which autonomous actors in the marketplace act in their individual best interests which then—added together—serve larger social interests. Society is conceived of, thus, as a collection of autonomous individuals behaving "selfishly." They believe that the "invisible hand" of the economy guides their actions in a rational, non-regulated structure. The market is, then, thought to be "free" due to the relative lack of government/public oversight necessary sustain it-individuals and their capital, money, capital do just fine on their own. Democratic values, in contrast, are such that citizens make political and social decisions based on deliberation, informed action, and consensus. This action can take the form of voting in elections or other forms of activism that serve the larger society. Things such as education, health care, welfare, and meaningful and life-sustaining work are democratic values. Getting ahead, competition, profit, cutting costs, and individual success are market values.
Many authors have addressed the ways in which capitalism works in opposition to democracy and critique the corporate/private media's exacerbation of the preference for capitalism within the binary. Channel One's programs are no exception. Rather, the programs illustrate the displacement of democratic values and their co-optation by capitalism. This linguistic assault innoculates viewers againsthe ills of capitlism by naturalizing or making capitalism seem patriotic, yet invisible....The conflation of the language and actions of democracy and the language and actions of capitalism converts both into ambiguously positive forces. This strategy thus supports exploitative capitalist forces by shutting down its critique.
The Meaning of the "Public"
Structurally speaking, the first and most powerful statement about the meaning of the public is communicated to students simply by the presence of Channel One in the classrooms. It is clearly an entrepeneurial activity, not unlike setting up a hot dog stand in each classroom, with a clear, if not overbearing, corporate and brand identity. The "public," non-commercial space of the schools, once seen as an integral value of public education, is now shared with commerce. Commerce, in symbolic terms compatible to neo-liberalism, comes to share the idea of "publicness" with public education. And of course, in many ways, given the enormous production costs per second of Channel One programming and given the technical and marketing resources at its disposal in creating a stimulating, even seductive, kid friendly message and given its non-existent demand on student intellect and student discipline, it would seem to make "normal" public classroom time appear quite dismal by comparison. The market, it would seem, can do a much better job of occupying "public" space than inefficient, stodgy, overpaid, noncharismatic, public service bureaucrats---- formally known as "teachers." In the one week of programming we examined, only one teacher appeared on the program. And as we mentioned above, both the context of her appearance ( a heavy-set middle-aged woman held aloft on the front end of what appeared to be a forklift) and the content of her presence (to ask a meaningless math question about how many earths would fit into the base of solar flare and to invite students to participate in the CH1 midterm with the ironic tone of "who, what, when, where and whatever") made a clear distinction between Ch1's idea of "public" education, which seemed to mean mostly hip, fun, sexy, popular and easy verses impossibly unhip, out-of-it, irrelevant, wanna-be school teacher "public" edcuation.
And of course, the full structural message about the new neo-liberal meaning of "public" is carried forward by the presence of the advertisements themselves. Video advertisements are now a "natural" part of public space, as natural as their ever dominant presence outside the classroom. In fact the "naturalness" of advertising is one of the most important defenses, both by CH1 spokespersons and by administrations defending their CH1 contracts, advertisements are everywhere, so students might as well get used to it.
At the same time, the regular inclusion of "public" service announcements such as the "Just Say No" anti-drug commercials, also communicate that "public" service is a natural component of the commercial world and an indication of CH1's commitment to be a responsible steward of "public" space. And even the military ads, such as the Marine recruitment ad repeated throughout the week, even though it was paid for by the military from tax dollars and represents a huge economic taxpayer subsidy to the commercial media, can be read as a quasi-public service annoucement in that it is a celebration of patriotism and a call to duty. The nature of the "patriotism" that is being celebrated and the quality of "duty" was is called to, as we indicated earlier, are certainly open to debate and consideration. At the same time this these ads also contribute to a reconstruction of the meaning of "public," away from a democratic, interdependent, deliberative, critically reflective space, to the more individual, non-reflective, product-friendly world of the "free" market.
In addition to the movement of commercialism staking what appeared to be its natural and even righteous claim to "public" space, we also found, at the same time, science presented as a synonym for "public" interest. In various stories, science was working hard to, if not control, at least warn all of "us" about the dangers of solar flares, to attempt to monitor and fight the spread of aids, and seeking a way to correct the "misspellings" which create genetic disorders. In the meantime, in one sentence headlines spread across the week, the student viewer was told that science was finding T-rex bones in South Dakota, helping Russians with their Y2K problems, and safely landing a space probe on Mars. Science and the market made what appeared to be natural claims on the true meaning of the idea of "publicness."
In the meantime, as we discussed earlier, when the student viewer was confronted with images of people gathered together in groups, which might be understood as a "public", such as in Northern Ireland and in Seattle, the "public" was portrayed as violent and disorderly mobs.
Another important way in which Channel One reconstructed our idea of the "public" was through the story it told about the meaning of "news". Channel One reconfirmed for the student viewer that "news" is primarily what commercial news organizations tell us it is. In modeling the Channel One format on a mix between a typical network evening news show and a typical network magazine format news show, the program teaches both that "news" is best left to corporate professionals and that the democratic part of news, the part that "informs" is readily and easily separated from the commercial part of news, such as ads, which function to sell. And again, science plays a critical role in this distinction by helping to convey that the "news" part of the program is quasi-scientific in its use of facts and graphics and seeing as believing approach to news stories. Science which is presented as in the public interest and outside of politics (which is messy and dangerous) is used as a kind of symbolic guarantee that the "news" too is in the "public" interest (although what that means has been seriously clouded) and outside of politics. When news anchor Gotham Chopra physically and symbolically stands in the space between the police and the demonstrators in Seattle he is clearly saying, although without words, that he is, that Channel One is, simply a disinterested reporter of facts.
Facts in the public interest.
At the very heart of the conflict between the various meanings of democracy and the free market is the concepts of freedom and of choice. The deep and driving idea of freedom that underpins liberal and neo-liberal thinking is freedom from. Historically this was seen as freedom from unjust or excessive political authority, such as the authority of kings and non-representative government. But it has come to mean, in more general terms, that the ideal of freedom is freedom from all restraints. One can see the obvious historical influence of this view in the development of "free" market thinking and proselytizing. One can also see the surprising link between the ideology of the free marketeers of the WTO, for instance, the black hooded anarchists in the street and the costumed teens in the JoyCam ad dancing wildly around the pool.
But one can also see the threat of this kind of "total freedom"
thinking to any form of government, of community and to even the market
itself. Total freedom from is the end of all rules, all responsibilities,
limits, and all contracts. The main question then becomes, how does one
temper the anarchistic tendencies of freedom from? Or put somewhat differently,
where and under what circumstances are individuals and groups to be given
the opportunity to express this total freedom from restraint?
This has become the great dividing line in the development of the competing
models of democracy that we have looked at.
Within neo-liberalism the free-market is offered up as both the standard
of total freedom (complete deregulation) AND as the means of regulating
that freedom (let the market decide). Of course this can't work because
once there are no rules, even a market can't operate because there is
no authority to enforce even the contractual conditions of a sale, much
less protect the property one calls his or her own. [The classic example
of this in United States broadcasting history is, of course, the early
completely deregulated days of radio, which became a Hobbesian war of
all against all until the radio companies begged the federal government
to step in and administer and police the assignment of frequencies.]
So how does neo-liberalism solve this dilemma of demanding total freedom from restraint, and then returning to the back door of government to request that somebody exercise some authority and control? With stepped up demands that order of the law be enforced (without much discussion about who made the laws and who the laws serve) and rule of the elites (need to defer to the expertise of scientists and the expert class).
What happens to the neo-liberal celebration of total anarchistic freedom? Since this kind of freedom looks good, and sells well, but is a lousy way to run a business, it splits into two discourses, which the Channel One segments appear to dutifully illustrate.
Freedom of Choice: The Market as Democracy?
Choice is a "freedom" held dear to most Americans, and in a democratic context of liberal pluralism, suggests that citizens have the freedom to choose representation-politicians are democratically elected. To qualify, not everyone living in the US is a citizen, and not everyone has the right to vote, most notably immigrants and felons/ex-convicts who are stripped of this right in an act of political terrorism. Further, minorities are disproportionately incarcerated, and many immigrants are people of color; thus, disenfranchisement is a form of institutional racism in the U.S. Nevertheless, choice in both the political sphere and in the market are exalted. For example, in the AIDS Day story, HIV/AIDS is referred to as "a disease of choice." Hydiea is presented as an "innocent" victim having become infected prenatally by a intravenous-drug-using birth mother, while persons contracting AIDS through sexual contact or drug use are characterized as "stupid" and thus deserving of the fatal illness. She chastizes teenagers: "If you're stupid enoug to get AIDS, you will." Students internalize this message, and one girl is quoted as saying, "I learned that AIDS is a disease of choice, and I choose to protect myself." Thus, the notion of choice is grafted onto an individualizing discourse to produce a social health issue stripped of its social roles and displaced solely within the realm of choice.
As a second example, the Elian story constructs a discourse US market values as globally triumphant, although the story attempts to lead viewers to believe they are actually talking about democracy. To explain, let's view the clip of E. Gonzolez's cousin, Manliyseis {sp/} ..... Gonzalez.
Dad G: I can give him love.. etc etc.
M. G.: We can give him love, plus things like education, other stuff....This
is a curious statement. Cuba's youth are more educated than US children
(and are all covered under national health care, as opposed to the millions
of children in the US without health insurance) though the story claims
the opposite. Further, the "other stuff" that she refers to
is not elaborated on, though we have a "clue." A Blue's Clue,
to be exact. Elian is shown wearing a colorful, sideways baseball cap
and a brand new Blue's Clues tee shirt. We deduce that these commercial
commodities are the other "stuff" that the child may have growing
up in the US. The story also interviews several Cuban teenagers preparing
boats to escape Cuba on their way to America. They cite freedom as their
reason for leaving, though the story does not clarify what types of freedoms
they are in search of or are longing for …
The WTO story also presents a reification of market values, as the trade representatives, who were trying to expand global capitalism and the "free market", are left unscathed, while protesters/demonstrators/ are depicted as violent and uninformed. Protest as democratic participation and activism is glossed over, while the corporations driving the WTO are reified. The destruction of property is also drawn out in the WTO story. Even the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, gets it wrong—he chastizes protestors for "vandalizing" "small businesses." This is a false characterization—only the windows of specifically targeted multinational corporations, Starbucks, McDonald's, were the targets of property damage in a concerted political effort. Thus, the transnational corporation's right to property is valued above the collective democratic action of the people.
[maybe showing the "facts" ch. 1 shows, provided by wto?]
In a similar move, the Ireland peace accord story attempts to discuss democratic values: peace, independence, and freedom, while at the same time, negating the history of the people's struggle, and the history of specific types of activism deemed in contradiction to previous violent destruction, without context...Also, teenagers in this story are upset by the struggle, not for deep political reasons, but rather becausel they couldn't go where they "wanted" to in town. Thus, their "freedom of spatial choice" was restricted and therefore they were scared and angry. Now, it seems, they can go where they want to. Issues of sovereignty, oppression, and political and ethnic struggle are drastically downplayed.
The market reigns supreme in the “Get a Job” story as we witness kids in their blue blazers and khakis experience the embarassing feat of selling onesself to a prospective employer. The kids aspot the language of the job market from the perspective of either the manager or the complacent worker, rather than as collective or empowered workers. We see the kids practicing, reproducing, wage labor behavior that places temporary and contingent teenaged workers in the mercy of the Chick-Fil-A owner. Further, the kids are depicted as needing to work not because they need to contribute to their family's income in a meaningful way, nor because they need to put themselves through college. Rather, they want to work so they can "buy a car so [my] mom doesn't have to drive me everywhere" {check quote}. Thus, they are working not for empowerment, but rather to gain market power--to buy cars and clothes.
Commercials over the week also point to the confusion of market ideology. Of course, we all know that commercials are designed to sell. Their ideological implications are primarily to support a capitalist economy through selling audiences to advertisers, as well as within the text, to cultivate a consumer mentality in order to encourage viewers to fill their social needs by buying products. Thus, the overproduction of capitalism is reified by nurturing audiences to buy everything. Over the course of the week, kids are sold Pepsi, the Marines, Polaroid Joy Cam and sticky film, and the Schick slick shave razor ?)..... Thus, in the commercials, kids are called on to buy, to support the capitalist economy. This is implicitly compared to underground economies-kids are discouraged from buying "drugs"-and the indication is that this means "street drugs." However, kids are explicitly asked to buy the appropriate, corporate/market drugs such as medicated acne face wash, as evidenced by several Clearasil commercials. They should also buy "unnessary" products that reify gender oppression, such as a razor, in order to make the individual girl solve her problems of learning "patience, independence, and biological warfare" by controlling her body. [this doesn't fit, i know, i just can't get over this ad]
[possible clips: clearasil vs. say no--end of commercial where group of kids is on street, one boy says, no thanks...]
Science, on the other hand, is never presented within the realm of the market, although in reality, pharmeceutical companies and other medical corporations are large elements of the economy. The story on the genome project presents ONLY one side of the story. No standards of journalistic balance are evident, as the anchors celebrate the "actors" ??} that have researched the human genome project. They provide no critiques of this project, nor do they tell kids that private corporations are now going to benefit from this knowledge, while many people-workers, children, people who have been arrested, women who may be suspected of being pregnant-will potentially be harmed. Thus, this story should have been presented within a market contex, but that context was absent. Likewise, the sun spots story presented science (a human-created scientific discourse and practice) as natural. We have a sceintist claim, "there's nothing we can do about it," referring to the sun. In fact, the only possible people who have agency here are "power companies" who can get warning and make necesarry precautions. Thus, corporate actors are the only ones who may be able to prevent harm to the rest of the people...Here, market values are privileged and democratic ones are absent.
CNN Newsroom: The Commercial Non-Commercial Alternative?
When Channel One was launched in 1989, CNN Newsroom was offered up as the commercial-free alternative for in-school video news programming. As recently as 1998, in the Consumer Union's report "Captive Kids" addressing commercialism in the classroom, CNN Newsroom has maintained this "commercial-free" title. This characterization, of course, neglects the concerns expressed in the Participatory /Strong Democracy model outlined above: Specifically that the neo-liberal belief in the possiblity of separating politics and economics, democracy and the free-market are an illusion. In the Participatory Democracy view of the press, it is the for-profit commercial foundation of the U.S. press that contributes to a crucial, yet nearly invisible form of censorship. And this form of censorship is not political, but economic. The first and foremost job of a for-profit press is to contribute to an ideological climate supportive of corporate capitalism.
From this perspective, reconsidering CNN Newsroom, it is clear that it is anything but commercial-free. CNN news itself is produced as a product to be sold in the form of cable-access fees to the CNN. And while in the early days of the CNN network this was its primary source of revenue, it finally added to this revenue stream, the more traditional network revenue created through delivery of advertising. CNN news then became directly commercial in a second sense: Its task was to create an audience-base which could be profitably sold to advertisers. Important efforts went into marketing CNN as a brand name with particular brand attributes which represented a profitable compromise between viewer desires, the market goals of CNN, and the larger ideological goals of a hospitable operating environment for CNN as a subsidary of corporate media giant Time-Warner, now AOL Time-Warner. CNN Newsroom then is deeply commercial in several senses. The primary news programs it features were originally produced as both product for CNN and as inducements to building a marketable audience base for advertisers. CNN Newsroom itself can be viewed partly as a corporate tax-deductible gift to education, but it must also be considered an ideological strategy in three senses. First it stands as a savy public relations move building positive brand image in the educational community in counterpoint to Channel One and its parent, currently Primedia. And this is no small accomplishment given the variety of educational wares Time-Warner and now AOL Time-Warner have to sell. Second, it has effectively served the market ideology of CNN and the cable industry as a whole in helping to defeat government regulation, reregulation, and publicly funded initiatives to provide for increased educational broacasting services. Third, it is can also be seen as ideological in the sense of the new "branding" movement in marketing to connect young consumers, as early as possible, to brands that they will be faithful to as adults.
But what does this all have to do with citizenship? Clearly with advertisements no longer obviously present, and the program format organized to follow more formally the standard network evening news model, the collision of citizenship verses consumership education becomes more difficult to see, but its exploration, we believe is as vital as the analysis of Channel One. In these terms, we argue that it is just as valid to ask of CNN Newsroom that same question we asked of Channel One: "What lessons does commercially produced news teach, particularly news produced to accomplish the commercial goals of organizing young people as a commodity and as a market, about the competing meanings of democracy and of citizenship? While we have neither the time or space to develop a full analysis parallel to our examination of Channel One, we would like to sketch out one provocative moment in CNN Newsroom's programming for the week under consideration.
Representations of the Self: Radical Individualism verses Social Interdependence
Consider for instance a dramatic segment that aired within the program’s "Chronicle" section on November 29, 1999. The piece is about a music program in Los Angeles where professional African American musicians come to teach and make music with at-risk youth in order to "prepare them to do something constructive" with their lives. Now if one brackets out the program's framing of Watts as "a notorious U.S. neighborhood" and its reduction of the history of jazz to leave out any mention of racial strife and focus on another story theme, about a black community coming together to take care of themselves and their children, we have a strong story celebrating social interdependence over neo-liberal radical individualism.
And we have a story about engagement and social change. This would appear
to be a story we would be very unlikely to find on CH1. And while the
question certainly arises as to how many stories there are like this for
the week, compared to stories framed by radical individualism, it still
stands as story that models in a way an engaged notion of citizenship.
But then we have need to look at the rest of the segment.
The music program is introduced by the CNN Newsroom anchor as about the "power of music and musicians" and about the "legacy of jazz." At the point the music program piece ends, without transition, the student viewer is presented with a 30-second "Voices of the Millenium" segment featuring Louis Armstrong. Since Armstrong was a famous jazz musician and an African American, the transition does not seem too jarring. At the same time, the focus of the piece returns to the standard themes of radical individualism and celebrity: One man's triumph and greatest and the adulation of his accomplishments by the masses. Another discord is struck by the Armstrong piece in that in the music program piece everyone featured and speaking is African American. In the Armstrong piece only three people are interviewed and provide the context and explanation of the importance of Armstrong's life: Three older white men, an author, a filmmaker, and oddly enough, the managing editor of Time magazine.
The strangeness of the piece and its jarring reframing of the meaning of jazz and music and social interdependence, is explained by researching the "Voices of the Millenium" tagline. It turns out, this celebrity segment on Armstrong was produced as part of an advertising campaign to run on CNN by the multinational communication technology giant Nokia to "position themselves as a company that connects people; is pioneering and innovative; and is the market leader in smart mobile phone technology...to deliver a clear understanding of Nokia's brand values and help to build intimate relationships with its audience." The piece is a celebration, once again, of radical individualism that was completely at odds with the community building work of the African American music mentors in Watts. The presence of the managing editor of Time magazine now becomes more clear. In terms of the advertising campaign, his presence serves to plug the magazine and to align the credibility of Time with Nokia. In terms of this CNN advertisement, appearing as a mini-documentary on CNN Newsroom, his presence again serves to plug the magazine (which was another media holding of Time-Warner, as was CNN and CNN Newsroom) and while not mentioning Nokia (the Nokia logo was removed from the Newsroom version) to bring at least the theme of the commercial campaign into the classroom.
CNN Newsroom, the commercial commercial-free alternative to Channel One is now showing advertisements to student viewers as documentary programming. Perhaps Michael Schudson was right when he coined the ter "capitalist realism" to define the function of advertising.
The commercial quality of news and of commercialism clearly does not only depend on the overt presence of what we have traditionally thought of as an advertisement. Understanding the full implications of the collision between competing models of democracy and citizenship and consumership is a matter of critical importance to media education, civic education, and consumer education.