Changing media technology and fresh concerns from citizens have brought new attention to a long-standing question: is it possible for media to serve the public good while also preserving artistic creativity and freedom?

This report will examine both the problems facing today’s media, from indecency and violence to under-representation of marginalized groups, and potential solutions as discussed by the participants of the Roundtable on Leadership and the Media, which was convened last March in Santa Barbara in association with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. 2007 

Foreword:

For 20 years,morning radio and cable television show host Don Imus hurled insults and ad hominem attacks against a variety of individuals and institutions. Yet many of the nation’s most revered personalities, particularly from the political and journalistic establishment, went on his show to discuss current events. On April 4, 2007, however, when Imus disparaged the Rutgers University women’s basketball team with a racist and misogynistic epithet, the curtain fell. First activists, then the public, his advertisers, and ultimately his corporate bosses all aligned to say “enough.” The celebrity guests were silent or critical, and within a week, he was off the air. Interestingly, in that particular situation, the government (in the form of the Federal Communications Commission) was not empowered or inclined to intervene.

How did the American media reach the point where talk show hosts in radio and certainly in every other medium regularly debase the culture, spew inanities, and insult segments of the audience? People eat bugs, confess perversions, distort facts, bare themselves, and act foolishly on the mass media. In a system that allows for creative triumphs, such clutter and litter is, at least in part, a by-product of the healthy artistic freedom that is central to the American ethic. But as with anything, there are also excesses and slow races to the bottom as degradations intensify over time; the frog is cooked in the pot, not noticing its own plight until the water has already boiled.

Recent advances in communications technology have brought new attention to this old problem. As the Internet rises in importance as an access point for entertainment and information, the difficulty of controlling its distressing and potentially dangerous elements becomes more apparent. Many now-standard approaches to controlling destructive media content simply will not work online, where creators and users number in the millions, often are anonymous, and change roles far more rapidly thanWashington can write policy....

Charles M. Firestone
Washington, D.C.
October 2007

Download Media, Creativity and the Public Good

PDF format, 1.1MB, 44Pages.

A Report of the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Leadership and the Media, Mark Lloyd, Rapporteur

The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program launched its new report Media, Creativity and the Public Good, at the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference held on Wednesday, December 6 in Washington DC. At the conference, C&S Executive Director Charlie Firestone moderated a panel that addressed the challenges of regulating Internet content for child protection with top-level regulators from the US, United Kingdom, and Australia.

The panel included FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, Australian Communications and Media Authority Member Chris Cheah, UK MP Derek Wyatt, OfCom (UK) Director of Media Literacy and Education Helen Normolye and US First Amendment advocate Robert Corn Revere. Among the solutions offered were to increase media literacy and education, web filtering tools, and starting a worldwide discussion about online safety that encompasses legal and cultural issues. Commissioner Tate also proposed using E-Rate dollars in the US  towards educating children in schools about navigating the web.

Visit Media, Creativity and the Public Good Aspen's Webpage

Introduction:

Technological advances in the media have in certain respects conquered time and space, making communication between people, even when separated by vast distances, both instantaneous and direct.

This development presents an enormous potential for service of the common good and constitutes a patrimony to safeguard and promote. Yet, as we all know, our world is far from perfect. Daily we are reminded that immediacy of communication does not necessarily translate into the building of cooperation and communion in society.

-Pope Benedict XVI, 2006

The conversation about the relationship between stories, story-telling, and social mores remains important and ongoing in part because of the constant introduction of new means of communication. Older generations are mystified by talk of online gaming and a second “virtual” life in cyberspace.

New generations may have difficulty understanding the impact of one or two television broadcasts on a society just beginning to digest the effects of radio andmovies with sound. Yet all the old questions about titillation, violence, commercialization, representation, and civility remain. Hope that new technologies will advance our noblest dreams shares space with fear that the latest gadget is an open door to a nightmarish future. How do wemake way for the on-rush of new technologies and protect the common good? How do we encourage individual freedom and creativity while we preserve and defend our moral values?...

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment