Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how the media are influenced by commercial considerations, and how they impinge on content, technique and distribution. Most media production is a business, and so must make a profit. All media products are advertising, in some sense proclaiming values and ways of life. The mainstream media convey, explicitly or implicitly, ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life and the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority and unquestioning patriotism. The media have great influence in politics and in forming social change.
Television can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image.
The media involve us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDs epidemic. As Marshall McLuhan noted, each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages. Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media. Media Literacy Resource Guide , Ontario Ministry of Education, Toronto, ON., Canada, 1989.