The Creation of the Media: Conspiracy for Sophomore Composition

The Creation of the Media: Conspiracy for Sophomore Composition.

Part of my composition class this semester is focused on recognizing conspiracy in the media- a fun way to raise awareness about our American assumptions of a truthful and unbiased media.  I am not sure where these assumptions come from-- unless it is the impression of total disclosure we get from "free speech" propaganda, availability of images of horrors from across the globe, and/or a comparison to other countries which are better known for using the media to push political and social agendas.  I am reminded of my friend, Melody, who moved to my small, Texas town our senior year of high school.  After we had begun to understand each other enough to discuss global issues, she told me about witnessing the famous Tienanmen square uprising from her family's apartment, and how she was so very surprised at things printed in newspapers and depicted on the news in the U.S.-- things she had never seen discussed openly by the media in China.  She was thrilled by the freedom of speech, and I was proud of my country, until it became evident to me that what seems to be openness and honesty can be a tool for deflection, and that money, literally, buys a pass for "free speech" in the media.

I worked as a disc jockey and production assistant for a radio station for several years during and after high school.  As a small town radio station, it appeared we had "purchased" fewer of the FCC's free speech permits, and were thus more limited in what we could say, or even which songs we could play (rhymes!).  Part of this censorship was the local population, but my boss intimated that FCC regulations were tighter on us than on George Carlin who was only restricted on a certain seven "bad" words.  We also had to watch out for alcohol references and some of those other "less-bad" words, and be more careful of what we played before ten p.m.  I realize this was eons ago in media years, and "times they are a'changing," but this experience began a healthy line of questioning about media control which for some reason is still often overlooked.  What is really embarrassing is that we believe the media hype that it is unbiased, at least to some extent.  My students seem to be a bit more savvy about the bias of media than I was at their age, but I am not sure they are aware of the history of media control that has helped form this bias.       

Reading Paul Starr's The Creation of the Media is already helping me adjust the framework for discussions of media in my sophomore composition class.  I think the history of the media in the U.S. and other countries could help establish some of the concerns of the class-- who really decides what is acceptable, who regulates media, and how it is regulated.  However, I am not sure my students would enjoy reading the text.  Something about Starr's rhythm in his introduction, probably attributed to strings of three and four syllable words, lulls me into a comfortable daze when I should be roused at the very least to annotate my lesson plans.  I found myself re-reading passages, and then later reading with instant clarity and a communion with the text, only to drift off into mental sidebars again later. Starr's sentences are lovely, but in the interest of, well, interest, perhaps occasionally dismissing a well-crafted and smooth sentence for the "quick and dirty" method would stir readers to more excitement.  Though they do nothing to expand our vocabulary, occasional monosyllabic words at least have a bombastic quality that supports action (or wakefulness).  But perhaps that is my own aculturation as a "21st Century Digital Boy" (or girl), who needs bright flashes and variety to kep my focus.  I don't think that's it, because many of my mental digressions form the text were about how nicely Starr's sentences flowed.  His correctness and faultless logic and language was distracting to me.  At least give me the stimulation of finding a better way to say the same thing!

Regardless of the soothing, rolling rhythm of the text, Starr keeps me reading with his subject matter (what a bland transition!).  Chapter1, "Early Modern Origins," hits directly on some of my personal interests with media and publishing, like books/print becoming a tradable commodity, and how this association with money and profit changed books/print for better and for worse.  Starr sets up the scene for an early example of "sellouts" (punk rockers weren't the first to see it, either) in which truth and art negotiate between what people want to hear/read and what controlling entities think they ought to  hear/read.  I think studying the emergence of accessible print culture gives us the opportunity to trace differences in modern media through the ways different cultures, regulated, edited, and altered the subjects of literature.  For example, last year I did a project which compared an excerpt of a text by Harriet Martineau printed in both an American and a British periodical.  While the British periodical abridged the text, leaving only the sections which seemed hyper-feminine, the American text left it unabridged, a clue about the editors, audiences, and cultures.  But if we read to learn, and all we have to read is what is selected to be printed and distributed, what do we learn?  And if we in the U.S. feel proud of a history of open media, separate from "those countries" which censor (gasp!) media, what elements of the system of printing and distributing are we neglecting to analyze? Is it acceptable to say our media is more honest or more accurate and therefore good enough?  Or as good as we can expect?  

On a final note, my sister-in-law, (a TCU alumna) is involved in communications in the Airforce.  A few years ago, it was her job to "spin" stories about military happenings in Afghanistan and present them to the public.  The stories went through several people before they got to her, and though she knew the "truth" behind the events (insofar as we may know truth) careful consideration had to be paid to the mission, top secret details, and the soldiers and families involved (etc. etc. etc.) before distributing the story to the public.  I think today in my composition class, we will make a list of Starr-inspired media filters.  Perhaps looking at these different filters will also help me in understanding eighteenth century print culture as well.