Media Mindfulness

Lately I’ve taken a break from teaching to focus on writing about education. Like most of us, I am pretty depressed about the state of our schools, and even more distraught that there is little criticism of No Child Left Behind coming to public attention. I truly hope the Democrats advocate for the abolition of […]

“You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows,”
Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan
Eat The Press | Fox Takes Fair And Balanced Look At Weather “War”…With One Side | The Huffington Post:
FNC’s “Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocey did a piece on the “War over the Weather” this morning in advance of […]

Ah, the murky world of disinformation.This is by far the strangest, most confusing marketing centrifuge I’ve ever encountered. The authors of this graf-ad are either legit artists posing as marketers who are posing as cops, or they are cops posing as marketers who are fronting as graf writers. Read the article below for all the […]

Marketplace: Iraq war justified? Maybe for Baby Einsteins:
By targeting babies, companies are marketing not just products but lifelong habits, hardwiring dependence on media before babies even have a chance to grow and develop the way they do it best, through hands-on creative play. And it’s through playing that children learn, among other things, skills essential […]

“The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image,
because the image will be so much more powerful than he could ever be.”
Marshall McLuhan

Technorati Tags: McLuhan

Sphere: Related Content

Independent Online Edition > Business News:
The internet video site YouTube says it plans to start sharing its revenue with users. Chad Hurley, co-founder of the site, said YouTube is working on developing ways for its users, who upload videos on to the site, to be paid for the content they have created.

Technorati Tags: YouTube

Sphere: Related […]

Cartoonist Ted Rall and political commentator nails it:

No fruit in this package

Fruit Shown on Label Often Not in the Box, Kids’ Food Study Says (Via commondreams.org):
Fruit is a big seller for parents who want to feed their children nutritious food. So it’s no surprise that manufacturers prominently display berries, cherries and oranges on boxes of breakfast cereals, drink cans and yogurt containers.
Berry […]

Not that Clark! Former counterterrorism czar, Richard Clark, has written a sci-fi thriller that apparently is loaded with grounded futurism. I listened to a fascinating interview with him on the Diane Rehm radio program. If you click below you can listen to the hour-long segment. I haven’t read Breakpoint yet, but it sounds like good […]

Heineken sky writing over Brooklyn, photo by Antonio Lopez

Some amazing media facts and a history of product placement benchmarks from MotherJones.com, including this clunker: “Advertisers spend more than $12 billion a year marketing to kids. The average American child is exposed to 40,000 ads per year.” Read on…
Ad Nauseam
Madison Avenue is scrambling to stick ads […]

The Raw Story | Rep. believes Democratic media reform bill may prevent possible ‘fascist’ takeover of US media:
Concerns about monopolies and fears of a possible “fascist” takeover of the US media have prompted a Democratic congressman to push to restore the Fairness Doctrine, RAW STORY has learned.
“Media reform is the most important issue confronting our […]

Photo by Antonio Lopez
This is a rather insane project, but someone had to do it. Some crazy (obsessed?) blogger took the time to photograph all the ads in Times Square. I’m not sure how he/she defines the area- it’s like an amorphous slim mold that grows and shrinks according to edible eye balls, but it’s […]

While I agree with the sentiment of this Second LIfe parody (it makes a fine point about being engaged with your physical reality), I still think it’s a false dichotomy to say one world is real and the other is virtual. It’s all real, and what happens in computer space and non-electronic space influence and […]

Who could have imagined five years ago that nicotine patches would compete with commercial tobacco companies for attention and ad dollars. Moreover, in a strange twist of fate, the product is shopped as a beauty aid. But there you have it. This ad is also in line with the trend to use deconstruction techniques as […]

Study: U.S. Media Overlooked Major Humanitarian Stories in 2006:
Last year millions of people in many countries lost their lives as a result of wars, violence, disease, and hunger, yet the major television networks in the United States did not tell their stories to the U.S. public, a new study on media coverage notes.
The staggering human […]

Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad - New York Times:
Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces.
Advertisers seem determined to fill every last one of them. Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance. Chinese food cartons promote […]

For all you youth media educators, I wanted to give you a heads-up on this terrific article that reviews many really good resources ranging from theory to practice. This is a primer that we’ll be referencing quite often (click the link for the full article).
Youth Media Reporter: The Ultimate Bookshelf for a Youth Media Educator:
Over […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwsgkurfCjE

It’s about time the pop culture produced a decent dystopic cult movie. Enter Children of Men, directed by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron (Y tu mama tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), a post-Baghdad, Road Warrior-type movie sans the cheesy trappings of antiseptic sci-fi. Add one part Black Hawk Down, two parts Blade Runner, […]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLK-rK3rfW8

I couldn’t make the Media Reform conference this year (click on the link for video, blog and pictures), but it can be experienced vicariously via YouTube. Here is Bill Moyer’s giving his keynote.

Technorati Tags: BillMoyers, MediaReform

Sphere: Related Content

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things:
Neuroscientists report that they can use brain scans to predict whether someone looking at a product will actually buy it or not. Dr. Brian Knuston and his colleagues at Stanford University put images of 40 objects in front of 26 subjects undergoing brain fMRIs. By analyzing which parts of […]