Teachers of media literacy have a great tool in the presidential campaign if they want to engage kids in the study of media symbols. The cases of “Joe the Plumber” and ‘60s radical William Ayers seem tailor-made to help kids smarten up about their media.
First, Joe the Plumber. His five minutes of fame commenced with last Wednesday’s presidential debate. Republican John McCain used Joe to hammer Democrat opponent Barack Obama. McCain asserted Joe would be harmed by Obama’s tax plan, since the plumber told Obama in a campaign video clip that he’d be making $250,000 a year in his business. Obama’s plan would force a tax hike on Joe, McCain said, and even Obama admitted the same in the clip.
The New York Times did some fact checking on Joe.
Seems he’s not quite a plumber (claims to be an apprentice, but no record at the union hall). His formal name is not Joe, but Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. He owes back taxes. One more thing: the business he wants to buy may be worth $250,000, but his income would not be nearly that high. Instead of a tax hike, he’s likely, at least in the first years of business ownership, to get a tax break under Obama’s plan.
Take another McCain attack ad, the one that accuses Obama of palling around with 1960's violent radical William Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground. FactCheck.org did an investigation of the McCain commercial laying out the Ayers-Obama connection and called the ad “largely untrue.”
In case you think I’m picking on the Republicans, FactCheck.org will set you straight in their book, “unSpun.” Peddlers of disinformation sit on both sides of the political aisle and their cases are spelled out in this great book, described by its authors as a handbook on how to recognize and avoid deception, not just in politics but in commercial advertising and life in general.
Like the cases of Joe the Plumber and William Ayers, “UnSpun” is a great resource for teachers who are just starting their exploration of media literacy. In it, the authors, Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, give us a list of “tricks” that advertisers and politicians use to deceive us. You can recognize these tricks in many of the ads and campaign messages that bombard us each day. The authors have attached clever names to the tricks that make them easier for kids to wrap their brains around. For instance, there’s the “Name It and Claim It” trick. Here, the deceiver renames the product to conceal some aspect of it that would otherwise turn us off.
I recently read the “unSpun” book with my high school sophomores. After learning the list of tricks to look for in their media use, they broke into groups to produce an ad (poster) for an imaginary product that uses one of the tricks. The only requirement was that the product be in a bottle.
Two students, Mike and Alex, were assigned the “Name It and Claim It” trick. They decided to rework maple syrup, this time calling their product Maple Nectar. They saw the word ‘syrup’ as a negative. It’s sticky, you can’t avoid getting it on your hands. But the word ‘nectar’ brought visions of gods bestowing a magical drink upon us all.
Lesson plans are easy to conjure with the “unSpun” book. If you try the poster project, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, "unSpun" helps us to fit media literacy into what researchers say it should now be. Since television and mass media have become so ingrained in our culture we should no longer view media education as providing "protection" against unwanted messages, according to Elizabeth Thoman in "Skills & Strategies for Media Education" at the Center for Media Literature. The goal should be "to help people become competent, critical and literate in all forms so that they control the interpretation of what they see and hear, rather than letting the interpretation control them."
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