[MISP] Senate bill needing your support - and a couple other items...

 

... Since we’re all involved in “media”, hopefully most of us appreciate the idea of “media literacy”. There’s a bill pending in the NM Senate right now, to support that. Please see essay below (running on KUNM?), and please consider urging support (e-mail links provided at bottom).

 

Also, I wanted to recommend a beautiful, moving and expertly done documentary showing a few more times at the SF Film Center, called “This Dust of Words” ( website: http://thisdustofwords.com/ ). It will break your heart, and the music alone is worth the price of admission!

                3/14 Saturday 4:15pm     3/15 Sunday 6:30pm     3/18 Wednesday 6:30pm

 

Finally, I hope you (filmmakers) will consider putting together spots for this website to promote NM filming, www.FilmHappens.com  There are two examples on the site, and I’d love to see a few more, then will start promoting it to the world. I think many of you could do great spots on the same theme – probably better than what I’ve done there. It could be a real showcase for you / for us, as NM filmmakers.  Thanks.

 

      Jim Terr   www.JimTerr.com

           Santa Fe, New Mexico USA  505-989-9298  "300,000 YouTube views and counting..." 

 

 

MEDIA LITERACY BILL – Essay for KUNM – Jim Terr © 2009

 

I was gratified to hear that a bill to promote media literacy made it out of the House of Representatives and will be voted on in Senate Committee and hopefully the floor in the coming week. Actually I was glad to hear that the subject even came up, because I’ve long considered media literacy one of the main issues – and one of the missing elements – in our awareness and in our educational system. If there’s a survival skill for our time, this is it.

 

Media literacy involves learning to dissect and understand the advertising messages with which the average child, for instance, is bombarded for over six hours per day – mostly from TV.

 

And only with a little training can we become aware of the various techniques by which we’re persuaded to buy the incredible amounts of unnecessary stuff that we buy, to be made to feel bad if we don’t, to feel a gnawing lack and general insecurity that can only be made right by going shopping.

 

State Representative Moe Maestas of Albuquerque, the sponsor of the bill-- HB342  -- says he’s concerned that 63% of 12-year-old girls are insecure about their bodies – and he points out that they didn’t learn that at home, but from media images and messages. Well, maybe some of them did learn it at home, from parents who are also hypnotized by the TV and equally unaware of what they’re being brainwashed with.

 

The New Mexico Media Literacy Project, a leader in this field nationally, points out that it’s not just TV, but also “radio, newspapers, magazines, books, billboards, signs, packaging, marketing materials, video games, recorded music, the Internet, and other forms of media” which supply these complex messages.

 

The problem is indeed beyond TV advertising and even beyond consumerism. It’s spin in general, as it affects our politics, and the ability of our politicians, talk show hosts, demagogues and PR firms to get away with outrageous mis-labeling, mis-logic, mis-information and phony statistics. Only by understanding the game, the PR techniques, can we be inoculated against it, and see our way through this muddy soup to some understanding of what’s going on.

 

I’ve tried to do my bit, I believe, having agitated for this for years, including on these very airwaves, and having developed a TV show – something that could even be broadcast from right here in New Mexico – called “Let’s Play Spin Doctor.” The idea is that a panel of high-school-age PR geniuses would demonstrate their skill at spinning, skewing, mis-representing and demagoguing, just like the big folks do. The attention-getter is that it’s young people who are being corrupted and doing the corrupting, and the benefit is that in the process the gaping national audience becomes more aware of the PR and spin techniques with which they’re bombarded every day.

 

I hope New Mexicans will consider contacting their state senators and asking them to support HB342 -- which makes media literacy classes available as an elective to students from grades 6 through 12 -- in the Senate Public Affairs Committee and on the Senate floor.  

 

State Senators on Public Affairs Committee who will be considering this bill in the next couple of days. If you’re supportive, please send them each a brief e-mail as to why you’d like them to support HB342 (yes, it’s still called HB342 even though it’s in the senate now). Thanks!

            

Senator	DEDE FELDMAN  dede.feldman@nmlegis.gov
Senator	TIM EICHENBERG  tim.eichenberg@nmlegis.gov
Senator	VERNON ASBILL  vernon@asbillforsenate.com
Senator	MARK BOITANO  boitanom@aol.com
Senator	MARY JANE GARCIA  maryjane.garcia@nmlegis.gov
Senator	ERIC GRIEGO  eric.griego@nmlegis.gov
Senator	GEORGE K MUNOZ  munozgeo@gmail.com
Senator	CYNTHIA NAVA  cynthia.nava@nmlegis.gov
Senator	GAY KERNAN  ggkern@valornet.com

 

        To find your own State Senator, to ask them to support the bill after it (hopefully) makes it out of committee:

 http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/leg.aspx?T=S

 

 

 

 

 

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