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What are the key values that dominate mass media? Dr. David Walsh, author of Selling Out America's Children: How America Puts Profits before Values and What Parents Can Do, identifies six key values:
1. Happiness is found in having things.
2. Get all you can for yourself.
3. Get it all as quickly as you can.
4. Win at all costs.
5. Violence is entertaining.
6. Always seek pleasure and avoid boredom.
When children spend an average of over four hours engaged with Mass Media (internet, games, TV...) we have to pause to question who has the greatest influence over the next generation.
David Batstone reflects:
Several years ago I interviewed for Sojourners one of Australia's most favored sons, Tim Winton. Winton is a novelist who was nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize twice before he turned 40. When I interviewed Winton, he had just written Cloudstreet, perhaps his signature novel. One of the key characters in Cloudstreet is a woman who gets so fed up with her family that she takes up living in a tent in the family's backyard. I asked Winton how he conjured up the concept of the character.To my surprise, he said that his grandmother lived in a tent in his backyard when he was growing up on the west coast of Australia. When I asked him if the neighbors thought that peculiar, he replied, "No, that was just grandma." He went on to lament that the push of media around the globe, with such narrow messages, "has squeezed all the eccentricity out of life." Winton then added with a sad voice, "Everyone just wants to be normal."
Yes, we celebrate individualism. But the truth is, I'm dying to meet an individual.
What is the response to this challenge? A simple lament and continue on as normal? How can a more balanced and a spiritual attitude to life be cultivated in this setting?
Clearly we need to make time and space away from the media with family and friends. The notion of "quality time" was used to justify minimal time with family for maximum impact. Unfortunately quality time only comes with quantity. It's often the last 10% which is the quality, and it's not easy to get there without the first 90%.
While ignoring mass media altogether is one option, our family takes the path of critical engagement. We watch movies and TV together, and critique the messages as well as the plots.
Engagement with the margins also helps to counteract the media messages related to prosperity and quality life.
Read one suggestion from David Batstone here.
Any other ideas?
Posted by gary at July 21, 2005 02:38 PM
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