June 15, 2009

Media Literacy: Learning to see through the screen

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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Posted by Michael Grant at 7:25 AM | | Comments

December 11, 2008

Presenting a look at media's future

For their semester projects, students in my media class developed proposals or pilots in one of the seven media businesses – books, movies, magazines, newspapers, radio, recording and television – and then pitched them to me in class as if I were the media mogul who would buy the project.

I can’t provide specifics. We all signed non-disclosure agreements, and I told the students, truthfully, there is no reason why an idea generated in this class can’t go on and make a bazillion dollars in the industry. If one of them DOES, trust me, you will hear about it in this blog. I can tell you that the projects reveal a lot about the future of media. When my kids were little, if I wanted a peek into what was going on in their culture, I could watch “The Simpsons” and “MTV.”

Same thing now. Students know things about media that would draw blank stares in Geezerville (over 40). These guys are already their own TV producers and directors, thanks to YouTube and MySpace, and in class they used these online resources to present their TV pilots and movie trailers that, when we were their age, would have required months of work and thousands of dollars. Watching this, I get a clearer conviction that, in media, the Web is changing everything.

One student, who has some prior acting and producing experience, has already pitched his project to genuine moguls. He won an audience with them last week in Los Angeles. I asked in him class if that pitch was different from pitching to me and the class. Yes, he said, it was. There was an oval table. He sat on one side, and three cable TV execs sat on the other. They didn’t speak, he said, or make gestures, or smile, or ask any questions at all.

So I stopped him and asked the class. “These three guys had one thing on their mind. Do you know what that is?” From four or five places in the class, there rose the word: “Money.” Either they learned something this semester, or they knew it already. I know I learned a lot. Question: how is prime time television the same as being stopped at a railroad crossing?

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Posted by Michael Grant at 11:02 AM | | Comments

October 24, 2008

The campaign through the lens of media literacy

Some background: The rate of media illiteracy in America is about 99.5 percent. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. The other 238.93 million Americans have received no media education because it is not a required subject in the American educational system. Media professionals work in businesses whose missions are to provide information, entertainment and persuasion products to media consumers. The products can be complex, but all are based on 12 media values and one definition. The definition: News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo. The 12 media values: conflict, progress, disaster, consequence, prominence, proximity, timeliness, human interest, novelty, sex, sensationalism and curiosity.

Here is the way a media literate sees the campaign.

Barack Obama is a natural newsmaker. He exhales news. News flies off of him the way bees fly out from the hive on the audacious mission to find sweet nectar and pollinate the world.

John McCain is plain, a hard-working uncle with a war story. As a newsmaker he is an anchor, reading news from a script, and he knows it. He suffers from crotch, which of course does not look comfortable on camera. His appearance regularly suggests the character Howard Beale from the movie "Network."

The media is the battleground on which the campaign is fought, in a long series of battles. There is little time for issues in a 24-hour media war cycle. The adversaries have the same mission, to make the most news which resolves conflict for the greatest number of viewers. The man who achieves that will win.

Obama has had a consistent advantage in the timeliness and novelty values. His being the first black American running for president will not get old. Nor, after the last eight years, will his initial campaign strategy of change. In fact change is so durable a topic that McCain's media team has worked to co-opt it.

In June, McCain realized his newsmaker disadvantages against such opposition and brought in a team of veteran media professionals from the 2004 Bush campaign. Their hard-hitting expertise helped create numerous media opportunities for McCain. Obama's lack of experience and his former associations became conflict items for the McCain team. A "celebrity" angle was tried, but didn't work very well because viewers like celebrities.

In the debates, Obama looked cool, collected and lawyerly, McCain came across as crotchety. Most of the news – polls, money, huge crowds, war, crashing economy, GOP defections – was breaking Obama's way. Then McCain made the biggest news of the campaign: Sarah Palin. She brought with her a "Sarah who?" conflict, but her novelty and sensational values were off the chart and she represented an untapped demographic.

Novelty and sensationalism erode quickly, though, and soon they needed some other value to give them legs. Palin's experience conflict was coming into news play, and into "SNL" scripts, while Colin Powell's endorsement removed Obama's experience conflict altogether. GOP crowd reactions made news and introduced a thread of dread into the campaign that McCain had to address. Obama provided the McCain team some new grist in Joe the Plumber, and Main Street, with its proximity value, became a theme that gave Palin folksy continuity in targeting Obama with an "elitist" conflict. That theme was severely compromised by the news of Palin's $150,000 campaign wardrobe.

In the closing days, the media community is wondering how McCain's team could have so badly mismanaged his newsmaking. It is the subject of a long analysis in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

In this media literate's view, McCain has one last hole card. He can pop. The hard-working uncle can get out from behind the anchor desk, tell his inept media managers to go to hell, take Cindy and Sarah by the hand, lean into the camera and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore. I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!'"

That will definitely make news the old-fashioned way. How it played out on election day would be the last exciting threat to the status quo of the campaign.

This view of the campaign is a simplification, as an Ibsen play or a Faulkner novel is a simplification. The advantage of literacy, in this case media literacy, in viewing these works is that it lets the viewer grasp the complexities, because he understands the shorthand.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 8:43 AM | | Comments

October 20, 2008

What Kristol doesn't know about media elites

William Kristol in his Monday column in The New York Times says some things about media elites that cannot be left unchallenged.

I take it personally, for one thing. I hate it when anyone, William Kristol included, goes off half-cocked about who I am. I am a media elite. After 35 years in the business, I know way too much about media to be anything but an elite. Call me Mike the Media Elite. Go ahead, mock me on “Saturday Night Live.” I have written enough newspaper stories to fill several books, and I teach 200-225 students annually the principles on which, in time, they may become media elites.

Kristol says media elites like telling readers “what’s going to happen,” because it “puts the elite prognosticators ahead of the curve, ahead of the simple-minded people who might entertain the delusion that they still have a choice.”

If The New York Times gives Kristol a column to write, it means he must be some kind of media elite himself, and I cannot find a way to square that stature with his words in the last paragraph. Unless he is lying. Otherwise, he wants me to believe he understands no more of the media-public relationship than an 18-year-old freshman walking into the classroom on the first day of the semester.

One of the first principles the freshmen learn about media – in this case, journalism – is the Definition of News: “News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.” Immediately upon learning that, students are taught that the media did not create the Definition of News. Do you know who did? PEOPLE. Most of the core principles, rules, and definitions of media were created by people long before the media existed. When the technology became available, the media came into existence because it took those people-created principles, rules, and definitions and turned them into a business.

The business was providing people – readers – with information they needed, or information they wanted. Why? Because information was not only the original human need, it was an instinct: Where’s the food? Where’s the water? Still possessed of the damnedest instinct to survive, people still insist on information, and they insist that we media elites provide it for them.

Back at the origin of these instincts, people were infatuated, perhaps not intellectually, but viscerally, by the threat to the status quo. The change to the status quo is anything that has happened. The threat to the status quo is anything that MIGHT happen. I don’t know when humans hit on the thought of the crystal ball, but I would nominate a night up under some dark, semi-protected ledge with lightning crashing, water rushing, volcanoes erupting, the ground shaking, and big mean hungry cats howling all around.

It’s not so much survival now, but humans STILL are fascinated by the threat to the status quo. Most of a later media business development, the entertainment business, is built directly on the threat to the status quo, and humans, knowing they aren’t going to get chomped, eat it up. They are addicted to it. And who do they count on to feed the addiction? The MEDIA, William! If “elite prognosticators” try to “stay ahead of the curve,” it’s because those so-called simple-minded people insist that’s where we position ourselves. They don’t like your “delusion of choice.” They would much rather know who is going to win. Millions of these people face two more weeks of actual physical agony before the election. Who do they look to for a breath of promise that it may go their way?

As a media elite, I wish the people knew why they felt this way. It would be so much better if they had some education about their role in what the media does, and why, but they don’t. It isn’t a required subject in the American educational system. It’s not healthy for the media, either. Technology has all but obliterated human patience, creating the media race to be first. U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics from May, 2007, identify about 1.5 million media professionals in the United States. That means that roughly 270 million Americans age 5 and over are functionally media illiterate. Or 270,000,001, counting William Kristol.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 3:27 PM | | Comments

October 14, 2008

Palin the media professional manipulator

Say what you will about Sarah Palin’s vice presidential credentials, she provides an excellent example of the dreadful state of media literacy in 2008 America.

Palin is a media literate, one of only about 1.5 million in America. Those 1.5 million acquired their media literacy through education. Palin has a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho, and in 1988 she worked in television as a sports reporter. Take if from an old sports writer, it doesn’t get any more MSM than that. She knows all the definitions, principles, values and rules that media professionals use every day in their work. It’s not all that complicated; 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.

The other 99 percent of Americans have zero education in media. It simply is not a required subject in American schools, which is turning into more and more of a drastic educational oversight as we move deeper into the digital age, where anybody with a computer can be a “journalist.” Those people really, really do need to understand how the mainstream media works.

This literacy gap has become, and ominously provides, a wedge between the media and the public. In their illiteracy, Americans accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, in a media-illiterate world, know they can get away with it. The result is a growing American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy, vital to our society’s constant and reasonable demand for information and entertainment, and a hub of the economy.

Palin the media professional has been providing a highly visible example, manipulating naturally media-illiterate campaign crowds in Florida with remarks blaming Katie Couric’s line of questioning for her “less-than-successful interviews with kinda mainstream media.”

“At that,” reported Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, “”Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, ‘Sit down, boy’.”

MSM professionals understand that Palin’s manipulations are only for short-term political effect, but still it is always an aggravation to witness such abuse by one of its own. Much of the aggravation rises from our feeling of helplessness to do anything constructive for the manipulated masses. Palin has all the power here. When Palin tells a crowd she “doesn’t have a very high opinion of the mainstream media,” she says it with the understanding that, without the MSM, her message, and their response, won’t be heard beyond the arena lobby. The GOP anger language has reached a point where observers wonder if McCain and Palin shouldn’t face down offenders on the spot. I wonder if Palin shouldn’t look into a mirror and have a few words with herself.

I always wish the people being manipulated had some idea of what was going on, even when it is seven-year-old girls watching “Hannah Montana.” These are the little girls who will convince their moms to spend $4,000 for a couple of tickets to a Hannah Montana concert. Shouldn’t the parents at least know how it is done?

About Palin’s manipulations, my wishing becomes extreme. She essentially is inviting revolt against an institution that is the literal oxygen of democracy. What will the long-term effects be? Universal media education, I hope.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 3:13 PM | | Comments

September 30, 2008

McCain's MMSM attack draws return fire

The Mainstream Media needs wingmen. I volunteer.

Katie Couric and news operations at the radio and television networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and other national newspapers, are members of the Mainstream Media, or MSM, as it has come to be called. These are the people responsible for encountering, finding, and objectively reporting the news, and they are the ones that really count, in terms of the safety of the democracy. In fact let’s give them an identifier of their own. They are the Mainstream Mainstream Media, or MMSM.

Besides the MMSM, all MSM organizations also have an opinion operation housing analysis and commentary, but those opinion operations don't need wingmen. Some of them should BE wingmen for their MMSM colleagues.

A wingman is a commentator, no doubt about it. I am about to attack those people who have taken the MMSM under attack, and my mission is to keep them under attack for as long as necessary. I am flying a pretty good airplane. I have 35 years of experience at the controls of the media profession, and I know the news side as well as I know the opinion side.

The mission needs wingmen because the MMSM can’t defend itself without appearing to lose balance and objectivity, particularly in a political season such as this. I can take on the McCain and Obama camps with impunity, however, because I am a declared commentator flying partisan colors, but they are not politically partisan. I am partisan free press. I am pro-MMSM, and anyone who is not is walking on the fighting side of me. The role of the MMSM in American democracy dates to the 1734 Zenger verdict and predates presidents, politics, and the Constitution. A free press is as basic to American democracy as oxygen atoms are to air. Nothing about this republic is more worthy of our regard and our respect.

I decided to become an MMSM wingman last night when I heard John McCain say to Katie Couric, “This is not the first time I have seen a governor being questioned by some quote, ‘expert’.” Katie Couric couldn’t bite his head off, but I sure can. I can wonder why a man who would aspire to the presidency of the United States would place his partisan needs before the principle of democratic oxygen. The nation is gripped by fear of financial failure, but no one is asking about the effect on the republic of an MMSM failure, which is far scarier. Rather, it has become open season on the free press. I could hear millions of Americans last night, joining McCain’s attack, cheering his words in the dark. Does he not see the risk?

In today’s MMSM, speaking of Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy, Ron Carey, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said, “Thanks to the mainstream media, quite a low expectation has been created for her performance.” Katon Dawson, the GOP chair in South Carolina, again referring to Palin, spoke of “a pile-on by the media elite. You don’t have this kind of negative media attack without a question mark being put up.”

If the MMSM’s reporting – and yes, they are the elites in their business – does not meet the Zenger verdict’s standard of truth, there will be retractions and corrections. In the meantime, the people are free to react to the information with high or low expectations, and with exclamation points or question marks. This wingman mission is all about the people. Taped to my instrument panel are these words:

“The guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press.”

Thus an attack such as McCain’s on the MMSM must in fact be an attack on the people. It is time it, and they, were defended.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 12:19 PM | | Comments

September 11, 2008

"Hockey Mom" fading, "Lipstick Season" awaits

“Hockey Mom” is still pulling great ratings, but I saw my first “I’m sick of” comment in the media pages today. Tomorrow, “HM” episodes will have been on the air 24/7 for two weeks, with almost no change in the dialogue. Sarah Palin says the same lines, over and over again. It’s worse than being forced to watch nothing but “Survivor” 24/7 for two weeks. Pretty soon, nothing helps. You could put lipstick on “Survivor” and it would still be “Survivor.”

That’s where we are. You could put lipstick on “Hockey Mom,” and it would still be “Hockey Mom.” The novelty is wearing off, as the novelty always does. If the show’s producers expect Sarah Palin to get John McCain elected, look for some re-invention soon. God help them if the audience starts calling for guest appearances from Joe Lieberman.

Wherever that goes, “Hockey Mom” has been responsible for a great spinoff, “Lipstick Season,” which may be topping the Nielsens long after the election. At last, the media has a reality show that means something. Millions of American women are coming onstage to talk about what it means to be a woman in a society where “Hockey Mom,” which portrays a woman as a marketing tool, can become a hit.

Millions of American men should be drawn to “Lipstick Season” too, but I’m only interested in one of them. Me. Karen has poured thousands of rounds of cannon fire into the television since “Hockey Mom” came on, and I find myself mystified. It is as if she is speaking a second language that I never heard before. I have fancied myself a hard worker where understanding women’s issues is concerned, but now I have to borrow a line from Olympia Dukakis: what I don’t know about women is a lot.

I think it is a matter of women finally having a double standard placed so everyone can see it, and placed there by a woman in the employ, of all agencies, the Republican Party, which women think wouldn’t know a double standard if one came up and bit it on the leg. It’s very convoluted, very hard to follow, totally new in my experience. Someone on morning television speaks of Palin’s right to privacy, and Karen fires back, the kitchen shaking with the thunder of the barrage. She is visibly incensed and combative, that same intensity I have sensed in the national air since Palin came on the scene.

I ask Karen to explain it to me, and she growls that the right to privacy is the bedrock principle of a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. I try to put it together, but I have always been weak with any thinking that involves inverted or over-under-around-through logic: if this is right, then that is wrong, which makes this other thing right. It takes the form of, well, how can Palin do this, when that is so, or not so?

It may be that Palin has pulled the pin on a gender grenade starting a war that women have been itching to fight, but couldn’t, because before, it was always a man pulling the pin. Is this a war that can only be fought with lipstick? Am I making any sense? I wish I knew, but I do know that I am feeling decidedly grateful in an over-under-around-through way to the GOP producers for “Hockey Mom” and the way it is setting the stage for “Lipstick Season.” I think it is going to be an epochal production.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 2:34 PM | | Comments

September 06, 2008

Pulling the plug on the First Amendment

In 35 years of newspapering and teaching, I developed a quiet amusement over the general public's almost total ignorance of how the news media does its job. Then, last year, I received the following email from a reader, one Stuart Jewell, complaining about media content: “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.”

His words struck not my newspaperman's heart, but my media educator's brain. I thought: "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."

Suddenly, and clearly, I understood that Stuart Jewell's problem was not ignorance. It was illiteracy. Media literacy is not a required subject in American schools, from kindergarten to university. Jewell had offered a judgment of a vital democratic institution without any sort of a knowledge baseline. With his focus, I expanded my ongoing research into the media-public relationship, and I found a gap, between the media and the public.

This gap has always been there but it really started to open in 1950s America. David Halberstam, in his comprehensive history, "The Fifties," noted it: "It was in the fifties that the nation became wired for television, a new medium experimented with by various politicians and social groups." Only 10 years later, "television had begun to alter the political and social fabric of the country, with stunning consequences."

It was a literacy gap. All the knowledge about the new medium resided with the experimenters, knowledge to which the general public had no real access. At the heart of the gap was a code, centuries old, but simple and easy to learn in college and university media degree programs. I teach it to 200 new students a year. It should be taught to everyone.

Never before have I seen that gap more apparent than in the Republican convention and the events surrounding it. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. In 21st-century America, if you are not a media professional, you are, like Stuart Jewell, essentially media-illiterate. In this illiteracy, Americans accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, in a media-illiterate world, know they can get away with it. The gap has become a wedge. The result is an American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy.

At the Republican convention were thousands of Stuart Jewells (with millions more watching) and a handful of media professionals, most notably a Republican strategist named Steve Schmidt. So notable was Schmidt's presence in the proceedings that he is the subject of a long profile in the Sunday, Sept. 7, New York Times. Using media tools, Schmidt manipulated public response that brought the audience, who had no idea why, to a frenzy. Democratic media professionals did the same thing last week at Denver, but in St. Paul, there was an ominous difference. Schmidt attacked the media, again and again, in ways that were not legitimate. He did not do this viciously; he did it as a professional using media tools to evoke a response.

If the public understood that, all would be well. But they didn't and don't. In their media illiteracy, Schmidt the media pro knew he could get away with it. And that is a huge part of the American crisis, going forward from this convention.

The public doesn't understand, because they have never been taught, that people are the authors of the media code that the professionals use, and thus are the source of all media, particularly journalism, or what Americans have always called a "free press." That connection is consistently revealed by professionals seeking to define exactly what journalists do. In a 1987 speech, Jeff Greenfield, now of CBS, laid it down nicely: "The bedrock theory of the free press is that once society decides to invest ultimate power in the people, they must have access to the widest possible range of information."

Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press. The natural, enduring strength of this circularity is acknowledged by the deliberations of the nation's founders. The place for their guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Journalists, educated in these realities and principles, write to it, write to the people, as if through a window which no power, natural or man-made, can close.

Steve Schmidt is trying, though. If he succeeds, he will have succeeded in pulling the plug from the First Amendment. Somebody needs to get him to talk about that. But for Sunday's New York Times profile, he declined to be interviewed.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 3:16 PM | | Comments

September 05, 2008

Days of our lives

When I was 17 years old, if I had told my grandmother Susie that someday I would read about a kid my age who knocked up the daughter of a woman governor, then two days later watched the kid and his girl and the governor hugging and shaking the hand of a candidate for President of the United States, Susie would have said, "You're crazy as a loon, boy."

Well, these are loon-crazy times, Suze. Watching TV this week has not been like watching a soap opera, it IS a soap opera. Republican political managers, most famously Karl Rove, are gifted media producers. As a media professional myself, I can't help but admire their work, even as it scares hell out of me. Their work of the last week has been frighteningly inspired, and also lucky.

Media producers use a set of known values to obtain a reaction from an audience. In fact the values taken together are known as a “reaction package.” Among the values are conflict, progress, disaster, prominence, proximity, human interest, novelty, sex, and sensationalism. All of these values are present to some carefully calibrated degree in every media product you see. Ninety-nine percent of Americans are completely unaware of these values at work, and their media illiteracy in the 21st century has become a real danger.

The Republican team's assignment this time: produce a media product for the Republican National Convention that is guaranteed to make news (a powerful way to maximize the product’s profit); to create proximity (an abiding level of warmth and belonging among the conventioneers and the Republican Party); to create conflict between adversaries and the Republicans; to maximize that conflict and turn it on the adversaries; and to manipulate emotions among Republicans everywhere.

How would I do it? The same way any media professional would do it. My convention follows the Democratic convention, with its charismatic star Barack Obama, and as that convention nears, I learn details that I incorporate into my planning. The speech in an outdoor stadium with an audience of 80,000 is a difficult act to top. I am going to need something to snatch away that image quickly, the next day, if possible. I will want John McCain to announce his vice-presidential candidate on the Friday after the Democratic convention ends.

How can the power of that announcement be maximized? Prominence, possibly. Conflict would be nice; people are drawn to conflict, which is why soap operas are successful. Of course sex always sells. Sensationalism could trump the Democratic sensationalism. And then novelty. Something so rare and made such big news that it would snatch away the media from the Democrats, and keep them away indefinitely. A surprise candidate . . . Obama kept people guessing, but then Biden certainly didn’t come as a surprise. What I need is a surprise candidate whom nobody knows.

A nobody lets me control change of the status quo. I want the biggest change possible, which will put me in control of the media. A nobody will generate a frenzy of media coverage, which works for me two ways. It creates curiosity and excitement, creates prominence for the nobody, and after a couple of days of media hounding, we’ll attack the media for its “feeding frenzy,” and the entire constituency will feel good.

Let's see: conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, a nobody who will make news. And there sat Sarah Palin. It must have felt like finding Marilyn Monroe sitting on the stool at Schrafft's. It was close; deadlines are hell in the media business, and it came down to the final days. McCain wanted Joe Lieberman, but the poor guy was still thinking that an election was about governing. Media professionals see this all the time. It was a media professional in the 1960s who told the National Football League owners, "Guys, you're not in the football business, you're in the television business." A media pro had to pull McCain aside and explain to him that he wasn't in the governing business, he was in the winning business.

And so "Hockey Mom" went on the air, and it could not have been more successful: 10s for conflict, sex, sensationalism, novelty, proximity, fury at the media hellhounds, and sexism as a torch to stick in the face of any critic.

It's crazy, Susie. Real life isn't a soap opera. Millions of people find themselves troubled by the looniness, in part because they don't understand this has been a media production. But the story isn't over yet. In my profession, I see over and over how fragile novelty is. When the novelty wears off, and there's nothing to talk about but Palin's qualifications, who will she be then? There's an interesting irony lurking in the wings. This week an email is circulating, generated by an Alaska woman who has known Palin since 1992. Reading her take on Palin's governing and management style is startling. If you read the information not knowing who it was about, you could swear it was George W. Bush.

John McCain has done everything possible to separate himself from George Bush. What if he wakes up in October and finds he is joined to George Bush at the ticket? The joke will be on him. What's the difference between George Bush and Sarah Palin? Lipstick.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 8:02 AM | | Comments

September 02, 2008

News happens so fast these days

It was about noon yesterday. We had just gotten back from walking and I went straight to the kitchen to turn on the TV and check out Gustav. I was watching this when Karen came in from her computer in the study. “Are you watching the news?”

“I’m watching Gustav,” I said. “It’s moved onshore now.”

“So you haven’t heard the news,” she said.

What news is that?” I said.

“Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant,” she said.

“You’re kidding!” I said. “She will have to resign!” I pictured John McCain fuming at her lies. But it turned out she wasn’t lying. McCain knew about the pregnancy when he announced her selection as his VP. Then that meant that HE was the liar. Why would he do that? Did he think they could maintain the cover-up until the election?

Then the analyses started, one of which stated that Palin being the mom of a pregnant teenage daughter could be appealing to voters. I stopped worrying about it. Too complex. Never worry about anything that is too complex to describe in a sentence of 12 words or less. Most of my worries are about one-word things, like “politics.” And in the politics of this election, it’s a simple worry: “Who will win?” Thought about at that level, I don’t think John McCain could attract enough votes to beat Barack Obama if he figured out how to mate a mink with an oil well.

So I am free to wonder what it must feel like being the parents of a boy who got a governor’s daughter pregnant. And how they must yearn for the calm of those days, before the governor became the vice presidential candidate. I wonder who they will vote for.

I have also been doodling ways that McCain could have worked the news into his presentation of Palin as his selection. That would have been the best thing: get it right out there. Remember when Dick Cheney shot the hunter, then tried to cover it up? Same thing. The cover-up story is always bigger than the up-front story. Truly, McCain would be far better off to have put it up-front in some warm fuzzy way. None of my doodling so far would have been any help to him.

As for agents who have contacted the boy about a book, I would say 25, with another 15 on voicemail. The book will buy the young couple a nice first house.

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Posted by Michael Grant at 2:59 PM | | Comments

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About me

  • I am a journalist, educator, writing consultant and author, living in La Mesa, CA. I am a native of Texas, which shows in most of my work. I believe that anything is possible. When I was 35, I realized that the ideal life would be to have the imagination of a six-year-old, and the wisdom of a 65-year-old. I can still get to the imagination (as you can, simply by cutting away all the data you’ve learned from first grade on) and I now possess the wisdom of a 65-year-old. Being 65 can be unsettling – too late to plant trees and enjoy the shade – but the wisdom that comes with it is terrific compensation. I learned in 50th grade that, no matter how bad things get, there is always compensation. Now I am in the 60th grade, and I am learning things that I didn’t know in 59th. This September, I’ll start 61st grade, and learn things I don’t know now. To find what grade you’re in, start with the year you started 12th grade, and count up. My newest book is “Warbirds – How They Played the Game.” My new company is The Write Outsource, quality media writing on deadline, at www.writeoutsource.com. I am working on a book about the media, and I am about to revise my cookbook about home cooking on a tight budget, such as so many of us face at this time.
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