Module 5 (Last Post)

In module 5 we covered topics such as consumerism and representation in the news and how these affect us in our lives. In Chapter 10 of Karen Sternheimer’s text, Connecting Social Problems and Populer Culture: Why Media is Not The Answer we found that children are a big concern when it comes to over-consumption and consumer knowledge. Sternheimer points out how easily we want to blame the media when children have a higher knowledge as consumers because “children are somehow untainted by consumer culture until advertisers enter their allegedly pure space” (p. 248). I found it interesting that we forget about the struggles that a large number of children in this country face while focusing on the numbers of children who overindulge as a problem. It is funny to think that as a society we worry about the manipulation and control that advertisements may have on children yet it has been found that “trade publications often speak of children as especially skeptical and difficult to address….children as often more independent than their parents are willing to admit…children are seen as a challenge” (Sternheimer p. 260). We tend to think that children are fragile beings that need constant supervision and protection from all things, but in reality children are able to distinguish nearly as much as adults when it comes to thinking critically about what they watch on television, if not more at times.

While reading through the different readings for this module, I couldn’t help but feel exhausted as I read about the different biases, misrepresentations, under/over-representations, and distortions found within news coverage. With Benjamin Redford (2003) stating, “the news bias distorts reporting and changes how we understand and react to the world around us” (p. 65) and Peter Hart (2014) writing,  “a survey of major cable news discussion programs shows a stunning lack of diversity among the guests,” I found myself increasingly discouraged about watching any news coverage. I never even considered the news lacking in diversity until taking this course and learning to actually read into what I saw in media. Even then, I wouldn’t have considered a channel like CNN to lack diversity being that it is supposed to be a more non-bias news station, yet it was found among other major news channels to lack in diversity in guests that were female and people of color. I found this shocking because I just assumed that in the news, especially on CNN, diversity should be ever present due to the fact we live in such a richly diverse country. Reading about the biases in news coverage and the disproportionate coverage of diversity really opened my eyes to what I have been watching, and makes me want to think more critically about what I am being told on the news.