Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of Mass Media Influences
More alarming than the amount of time Americans spend absorbing messages to change their values or political views, or induce them to buy things, is the lack of insight about how and why those messages are structured and delivered. Through classrooms and newspaper columns, media studies professor McCall has educated Americans about the operation, finance, and regulation of the media, as well as their role in influencing decisions from buying soap to electing presidents. Eschewing media literacy that focuses on one week without television or take-control-of-the-remote-control campaigns, McCall offers analysis of media elements from the First Amendment to the advent of video news releases. He explores shortcomings in television from the level of sex and violence in programming to the paucity of serious coverage of social issues or political campaigns. McCall devotes a chapter to media-saturated children exposed to antisocial behavior on television and via video games. In the final chapter, McCall offers practical advice on how Americans can insist on more responsible media and better control their own viewing habits and those of their children. Bush, Vanessa--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.