March 18, 2001

RAISING MEDIA-SAVVY KIDS

American children are immersed in a media sea almost from birth and are hardly more aware of how its currents move them than a fish in the ocean.

Donna Huffman of Littleton, Colo., wants to change that.

She's started an organization to promote media literacy, called Priime Tiime Today, an acronym for "Parents Responsibly Involved in Media Excellence" and "Teens Involved in Media Excellence" (on the Web at http://www.primett.org). The Rocky Mountain News in Denver is a supporter, along with other media companies and other businesses.

The need for such an organization is apparent to anyone who works in the media and deals with members of the public. People are hazy (let's be charitable) on the difference between news and opinion. They're unaware that some of the things in their newspaper are supposed to be opinion; we get letters from readers who complain that our editorials are "biased."

Well, yeah. An editorial page that takes every side of every issue isn't worth the dead trees it's printed on. We do print letters and columns from people who don't agree with our editorials, but those are their opinions, not ours.

On the other hand, I get letters from readers who say they like my columns because they're "objective."

My goodness, I certainly hope not.

Readers tend to attribute anything they don't like about their newspaper to all kinds of nefarious influences, from journalists' political partisanship to corporate ownership to pressure from advertisers. A favorite accusation is that we bury stories we disagree with in the back of the paper. But the people who write the editorials have nothing to do with how news stories are played in the rest of the paper, and the people who lay out the paper don't necessarily agree with the editorials.

Huffman hopes to lessen the confusion. The organization has developed a curriculum unit on media literacy -- "the application of critical thinking to the messages of mass media" -- which is sent to every middle and high school in Colorado. It includes goals, facts about the media, topics for discussion and classroom activities.

Among the goals are having students learn how to analyze and critique advertising, and become aware of what the news includes, what it leaves out, and why. One suggested activity is to read editorials on a particular topic, and then see how readers respond in the letters section. "Circle the facts and underline the opinion," the curriculum guide says. A most useful distinction.

To encourage use of the curriculum, which is also aligned with Colorado's state standards, Priime Tiime sponsors an essay contest for middle-schoolers, now in its sixth year. The topic this year: "Do the media affect the democratic process?" There were 240 entries from 21 schools. Also this year, for the first time, there was a video production contest for high-school students.

I was one of the judges in the final round of the essay contest, and I was very impressed by the thoughtfulness of the entries. Not that I agreed with everything they said, but adult media commentators don't all agree either, and there's no reason why they should.

One teacher, Don Batt of Laredo Middle School in Aurora, placed seven students in the top 10. Contests, he says, are an excellent way for him to challenge his students, and he also remembers that when he won a high-school speech contest it raised his expectations for what he could accomplish.

At the awards luncheon, one speaker was Sue Lockwood Summers, a media specialist in Jefferson County, Colo., schools, a member of Priime Tiime's board and director of another media literacy organization, Media Alert! Her message to parents was that you can't start too soon if you want to raise media-savvy kids.

She held up a Honey-Nut Cheerios box that features a cool Web site dedicated to the "you rule" school.

"Nothing to study, no homework, and no tests. It's all recess all the time," she read from the box.

"That's a media message," she said. "You might want to talk it over with your kids."

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