Every time a pair of human eyes falls on a newspaper page, an ironic screen, as strange as it is ominous, slides automatically into place between the two. Strange, because it exists. Ominous, because of its power. Ironic, because of its source. Only a few people know it is there. The general public has no idea.
The screen conceals media codes that are embedded in the page. The same is true of whatever media your eyes are looking at: a television screen, a movie, or the pages of a magazine, or a book. The codes determine the design, content, delivery and effect of the media message, much the same as the rules of English determine the design, content, delivery and effect of an ordinary sentence.
With this code, the media can read you like a book. Media professionals use the code to create thousands of media products that are offered to the public every single day. From this blizzard, the public picks and chooses, without ever understanding why, the media products – from categories of information, entertainment, and manipulation – it wishes to consume.
Some of this content is necessary, indispensable in a democratic nation of free people. And some of it creates problems that cause the public great worry, such as "Hannah Montana." Children as young as four and five years old become swept up in media influences they don't understand, particularly influences to worship celebrities, both living and animated, to imitate their heroes and, most crucially, to buy things they are made to feel will bring them closer to their heroes.
Children and young adults, ages 4-18, become the financial backers (through their parents' wallets, routinely) of billion-dollar media industries, best exemplified by celebrity worship and professional sports, without the slightest idea of what is happening. This is not to say nobody should emulate stars or watch sports, which is fun and has emotional benefits, but fans should be at least provided with strategies used by media megabusinesses targeted at them, and some details about how it works.
Thousands of adults in America, never having received a day of media schooling, complain openly about media performance, and the deterioration of that performance in the last 20 years. Media-bashing is a primary activity in the blogosphere. True, much of it is blogoblather, but much of it is serious. The Project for Excellence in Journalism cites "growing skepticism about journalists, their companies and the news media as an institution."
The skeptics write letters to the editor like this one from my files, from a perfectly serious San Diegan named Stuart Jewell, which goes to the heart of the issue in a single sentence: “It’s strange to me, that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism, and all the other media forms, is as black-and-white as learning English. The media uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs.
This “talent” appears strange to the general public, who Stuart Jewell represents so well, because they didn’t receive any media education in school. How can a consumer complain about the job the media is doing, with no idea of the rules the media uses to do its job?
Scariest of all, media consumers of all ages are being invited to become part of the 21st-century media, actual practitioners of the trade. If there is going to be not only a trend, but a distinct business decision to “open up” newspapers to community participation via the Internet, then I think the community participators need at least a flash course in Media Code 101. These are the principles that I want known to citizens in places where newspapers are introducing what they call “participatory journalism,” or “citizen journalism,” or what I call "macramé journalism." It scares me to read, in The New York Times, that such newspapers mean to become “a virtual town square, where citizens have a say in the news and where every reader is a reporter,” without some assurance that those readers are least are familiar with journalism principles that are older than the Constitution and are the bedrock for the First Amendment. I want to know if these macramé journalists have ever even heard of the media code.
Most of them haven't, even though the media code is no big secret. It is a relatively simple system of values, definitions and realities. You can learn it at any college or university that offers courses in journalism, marketing, public relations and advertising. I have known the code and have been using it in my work since 1969, as a reporter, columnist, essayist, author and educator. As a college educator, teaching journalism, I teach the code to more than 200 new students every school year. Practically all of them pass with ease.
It is only education, then, that keeps anyone from seeing and understanding the code. The screen, between the eyes and the subject, exists only because no one has taught the eyes how to see through it. Learning the media code is no different from learning algebra, except algebra is taught in American schools, and the media code is not. American children by the millions have graduated from its high schools with the algebra screen lifted, and the media code screen still in place. They are sent out to fly blind into lives that are informed, entertained, manipulated and shaped by daily blizzards of media code that they can’t see, and don’t understand.
It's best for all if the public knows what the media knows about this business relationship between the two. In this age, of all ages, the study of media code should not be confined to university journalism studies; it should be at least introduced in elementary school, and become a core curriculum class in every American high school.
Though that goal is not around the corner, the vital importance of making media literacy available to children in the digital world is attracting the attention of educators. The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and the News Literacy Project are two organizations working to bring media literacy studies into the public education curriculum. Says NAMLE: "Media literacy is a basic life skill for the 21st century. It is essential for a healthy democracy."
One of the NAMLE founders, Dr. Renee Hobbs of Temple University, in 2007 published a book, "Reading the Media: Media Literacy in High School English," a study of high school teachers who incorporated media analysis – journalism, television, movies, and Internet media – into the English curriculum. That is a logical step, and in the right direction, though understanding the media code might require a curriculum unto itself.
A non-profit organization called Common Sense Media, overseen and operated by a board and staff with impressive educational and professional pedigrees, is running a lively Website "dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives of kids and families." Among their "Ten Common Sense Beliefs" is this one, No. 3: "We believe in teaching our kids to be savvy media interpreters – we can't cover their eyes but we can teach them to see."
All that is missing from that statement is the currency of media language, as it is spoken and employed in their work by media professionals and educators. When children – and adults – know the media code, they will have no problem reading the media the same way the media reads them: like a book. It starts with education. To change the media, change the audience.
That is the goal of this Monday Media Literacy series. When people learn to use the media code in reading the media, they take power back from the media. They pull back the curtain on the new Wizards of Oz. They become more informed consumers, whether the product is information, entertainment or manipulation. Informed consumers have the best chance to make choices they will feel good about. When the media Wizards start to realize that the consumers know the media code, know what is going on, it will move the media-public relationship toward a more honest balance of power. It can only happen with audience education, and accountability.
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