Follow along below – read/watch clips.
Once you are finished please respond here with your thoughts on the underlying message of “what is citizenship” in each of ALL THREE news clips below, and any other feelings/thoughts you wish.
300 word response (total for comments on all three) PLUS 50 word response to two other students. ( You can comment to many students if you want, but do a 50 word comment to two other students.)
What does the George Floyd media coverage have to do with citizenship? Read on…
A MESSAGE FROM ME AND INTRODUCTION TO LESSON:
Well students when I spent days preparing this lesson for you on the coverage of the George Floyd murder and the subsequent protests and riots. It was so overwhelming I can only hope that I express myself clearly here.
Typically in these police murder of a black citizen (usually male) there is much debate over whether or not the police used appropriate Force.
However this situation is different.
This murder was so blatant and sustained for 9 minutes and in the open – that no one, no news source, no one who even may be racist can deny that this was an unjust murder. The news was different this time.
Still the News changes every day, just recently I saw a short clip recently I saw a short clip that considered George Floyd may have died from the presence of the drug fentanyl in his system. Of course it is easy to air a story like that long after the fact of his death. This is one of the ways that media coverage and its effect on our beliefs diminishes the cause of Black Lives Matter.
I must tell you that if I had not had a baby at the time I would have been out protesting every day. I have taken Marcelino to protests before but there was a much greater threat of violence than there was when we went out protesting in the past.
If we were together in person I might slip into my political opinions and then I would tell you that those are my own opinions and that I am a left-wing Democrat type and that my opinions are left-wing. Hopefully here I can avoid falling into that trap.
The clips that I present to you may not stand out in terms of being biased. However the expression of ideas always has consequences in terms of being able to affect our beliefs about Society, ourselves and especially others in society. Please review the handout on cultivation below as you begin this lesson – HANDOUT IS BELOW HIGHLIGHTED IN YELLOW.
At first in biased right-wing media sources they were saying that all of the violent looters and protesters were from the left-wing Anarchist group Antifa. However over the days I heard more and more that there are left-wing and right-wing Anarchist groups and I have heard this in right-wing media too! I have to say that generally in these situations they never report about any right-wing Anarchist activity. Again this situation is so different.
Generally in biased right-wing media they refer to all other media as biased left-wing media. But this is a falsehood. The rest of the media they refer to is simply the mainstream media. And they also call it the mainstream media but they say that all mainstream media is biased left-wing media. There is biased left-wing media, however all of the major networks and newspapers that have been part of our country for decades and some over a century are simply mainstream media sources.
With that in mind I want to say that in mainstream media sources they have been acknowledging all along that there are left-wing and right-wing anarchist looters and protesters causing violence.
I will post some clips and post some commentary and it will be something for you to experience. I hope if you are interested in watching, interested in considering the media coverage that you will ask yourselves as you watch, how might this affect people’s beliefs? How do I interpret this? And how might others interpret this – those who are very very different from me, who have different points of view, political beliefs, cultural practices…?
I hope that our class is fulfilling its purpose which is to help us develop a muscle to examine our own beliefs. To be able to ask ourselves how much of our beliefs have actually been created by our media experience and how much of these beliefs may have little to do with real life. The answer is only for us to know.
Our beliefs about race/ethnicity, the way we see Justice, the way we see suffering, the way we vote and who is a typical citizen of the United States have all been influenced by media even if we use our critical thinking skills 100% of the time.
I hope this class helps you to question your own beliefs in light of what you have seen over and over again in the media.
LESSON IS BELOW:
REVIEW CULTIVATION HANDOUT (in yellow) BELOW BEFORE YOU WATCH AND READ ABOUT NEWS CLIPS – these are notes from a documentary so not all of this applies to what is going on today.
Also I want to mention that media cultivation in respect to violence (mean world syndrome) is not different from any other kind of media
cultivation. It is just such a glaring example they gave it its own name. The main point is: Media Cultivation is defined as: the building and maintenance of stable images about life and society
Dr. George Gerbner – Dean Emeritus, Annenberg School of Communication, University
of Pennsylvania founded the 40 year Cultural Indicators project – the most
comprehensive study ever conducted on the impact of television where programs and
characters have been tracked and analyzed –Cultural Indicators Project—The more
television one watches, the more they think life is like the way it is portrayed on
television.
TELEVISION CULTIVATES OUR PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD
Television is the major storyteller in our culture today – so global corporate
conglomerates control the narrative of society
Violence in the Media
• Who are the cast of characters? — #1 white males (television’s best customers)
• Violence projects a sense of male power
• Violence is easy to produce – Violence is a good commodity for a global market
because it needs no translation
– Happy Violence is violence that is entertaining.
• “Fun”, shows that problems can be solved by violence and that violence has no
consequences – Stories that include violence tell us who is powerful and who is not
powerful in society
• —People can internalize the role that they see others like themselves portray
—–the MAJOR lesson of violence is the “Mean World” syndrome – those who
watch more television perceive the world to be more of a mean world than
someone who watches less television
———People who suffer from Mean World syndrome project more of a sense of
danger on the world, which can affect the way they vote, and how much
“protection” they feel that they need, or the more aggressive they feel they need
to be
• Censorship is not the answer – We need more voices in the media because:
“If one person were to write the ballads of a country… he would not need to care who
makes the laws” – Andrew Fletcher
If a small number of corporate entities write the “ballads” where is the voice of the rest
of us?
Culture , Cultivation and Media
• Culture is defined as: the stories and messages that govern our conception of
life and our behavior
– When we think of media effects, we expect media to cause change
— Gerbner has found instead that television “cultivates” a particular way of
seeing the world.
—– Cultivation occurs when the same images and patterns are repeated over and
over again
– we begin to see those images and patterns as “normal”
• Cultivation is defined as: the building and maintenance of stable images about
life and society
• Heavy viewers absorb the television image of life and society, maybe from as
early as infancy
Casting and Fate
• Images of women often emphasize their bodies and sexuality as well as dependence
and potential victimization (limits range where they are likely to be seen as successful)
• Images of men often emphasize control and aggression
• 3 men to every woman
• Women get fewer roles as they age, while the number of men’s roles remain the same
• Rare occupations that are represented much more often than ones that are
common
The lower one-third of our population are represented by only 1.2% of television
characters
When poor people do appear on television, they are often connected to crime,
drugs or violence
When African-Americans are presented, they are often represented as either very
successful or as criminals, it gives the impression that our “race” problem is solved and
that “some” people are just criminal
START CLIPS:
1. This clip is just a very typical news covering riots. They discuss potential
anarchists from both sides, give an overview of information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz26mVXziIw Links to an external site.
2. This clip is from MSNBC which is a 24 hour news network that does display a
liberal bias. However they do not misreport facts or spread misinformation. I say
that based on research and tracking that I have done.
PLEASE WATCH WHOLE CLIP – clip is self explanatory – my only comment is
that the fact of President is holding up a Bible reinforces the idea that we are a
good Christian Nation. Which is an idea that is often present in our media.
However, this country was founded on religious freedom and we are a country
that has every religion in it and freedom for every religion. So it is notable that the
president decides to hold up a Bible because a great number of viewers of
biased right-wing media are Christian and often times are Trump’s voters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL-w38bYZ0U&t=180sLinks to an external site.
3. This next clip will need a lot of explanation. I tried very hard not to pick a biased
source that was just from right-wing media. But as I mentioned before even the
right-wing media is reporting pretty accurately. In this clip cool different
phenomena is included which I will comment on afterwards. There is also some
misinformation. PLEASE WATCH WHOLE CLIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOX2T8si7xwLinks to an external site.
– Starting at 1 minute 30 seconds Laura Ingraham The Host starts talking about New
York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He has been very outspoken against the president
during the covid Outbreak and as a result, in right-wing media they have talked about
him in a negative way. So she mentions casually that the nursing homes in New York
had a lot of covid-19. Deaths.
– And then she shows a clip of the governor criticizing the president for
using Force against peaceful protesters to clear his path for a photo opportunity. This is
the same photo opportunity that we saw in the previous clip. However, as she continues
talking – the footage that she shows is not of peaceful protesters.
– She implies that the
governor is criticizing the president for how he is treating the looting and burning
participants. When in fact that clip is the governor talking about the events of earlier that
day. Clearly this is Misinformation. She goes on to build an argument for why the
president is correct based on this false idea she has given the viewers.
– Around 4 minutes the host says that there are no Twitter warnings when organized protest
groups tweet. She is referring to the fact that Twitter in the past week decided to
fact-check the president because he was lying. He lied about the instances of voter
fraud when US citizens vote by mail. And Twitter checked him.
– The truth is any citizen in this
country expressing any thing they want is different than our president tweeting a lie. Twitter
finally decided to add this fact check and this is what she is referring to. You would not
know this unless you watch a lot of right-wing media and that is why I am explaining it.
The host is implying that everyone political should have twitter warnings even though the warning had to do with lying specifically. In this way she props up President Trump.
– At 4 minutes and 30 seconds this clip takes a different turn. The host asks where does
all this hatred towards our country come from. And then she explains. I want you to
know that this is a very very common argument in biased right-wing media and These
are beliefs that are widely held by Trump supporters and by those who watch biased
right-wing media a lot. Whether or not you feel those viewers are influenced by watching
is your own personal opinion – – but I am showing you what viewers see over and over
again that might give them a specific set of beliefs.
– She says that the radical professors are attacking the ideals of Western Civilization.
– First of all this professor has every right to tweet whatever she wants. While she is in
the classroom that is a different story but what she chooses to tell the public is her own
right as a citizen.
– Second of all the professor is tweeting this because she feels that
Monuments to the Civil War – to the side that was fighting to keep slavery and make
sure African Americans had no rights – she feels that if people are pulling stuff down she
can support those monuments coming down. Because they represent the opposite of
what our country represents – equal rights for all.
– The professor gives directions on how to pull
them down in the most safe manner. Which would only be helpful to those who may be
attacking those monuments in terms of them hurting other people.
– At this point the host goes on to imply that people who are successful and educated have no right to be upset or act out because they are upset about equal rights or this particular situation. Implying that as long as you are “making it” you have no right to fight for anyone else.
– And then she gets to another very common right-wing talking point. That the solution to
all of this is for us to all love each other. It is what we teach our children. The argument
she poses here is based on the idea that we live in a post-racial society. Meaning that
we live in a society where racism is just something from our past.
– She is implying that
these protesters and looters have nothing to be upset about, we just need to raise our
children better. None of this has anything to do with institutions in society, none of this
has anything to do with police treatment. Yes in this instance this was murder – However
the solution to this starts at home with how we teach our children. This has nothing to
do with our government or large institutions in society.
– I personally believe the exact opposite of this argument that she poses and I feel that
we have seen evidence that show the opposite as well. But of course I am just a person
and I have my own opinion. What is most important for me is for you all to see this
general belief pattern that many people who are against the protests have.
