Originally publihsed in the Media Studies Journal, Fall 1994,
copyright 1994 by The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center and The Freedom Forum
Published 1996 by Transaction Publishers
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 95-46958
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Children and the media/edited by Everette E. Dennis and Edward C. Pease.
p. cm.
Originally published in the Fall 1994 issue of Media studies journal.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56000-872-51
Mass media and children. I. Dennis, Everette E. II. Pease, Edward C.
P94.5.C55C47 1996
302.23'083dc20 95-46958
ISBN 13: 978-1-56000-872-9 (pbk)
Public discussion of the media in the United States is usually framed by the assumption that the media are largely private enterprises and therefore not often subject to government intervention. The First Amendment was the framers' shield against government interference with the media. There is, however, at least one major exception to this "hands off" policy, and it involves children.
Whether it is violence on television or in the movies, newspaper publication of the names of juveniles or pornography on the Internet, the protection of children is often a rationale for public and political involvement with the media in a country where there has been little public policy toward the system of communication, save one that followed a laissez-faire approach. Thus, the detrimental effects of movies, comic books and video games, as well as efforts to reach the child as consumer, over the last half century have made the nexus between children and media vital and important.
This volume takes issue with the long-held assumption that the media are produced by adults for adults and about adults. While that may be true in the main, it does not hold completely and has often muted the role of the child on the receiving end of media fare. The child is, in fact, a consumer of the media and increasingly children are producers of media products and contentboth indirectly in market studies and directly as enterprising creators of new media for children.
Increasingly, too, children are the subject of media content as they are written about, probed and scrutinized. Some of the fare about children in the mediaprint and broadcast, as well as new electronic servicesis also directed toward children. Until recently, there has been precious little conscious attention to news coverage of and about children, but now that is changing.
Children and the Media, as developed and played out in this book is, about the complex relationship of policies involving media access and use by children historically and in the present, as well as the coverage of children in news media. And as indicated earlier, it also takes up "kids making media."
For me, this project began twenty years ago in a study of media coverage of children and childhood. That took me into an exploration of the history of childhood and the history of media's involvement with children. With a coauthor, I discovered that the "media behavior" of children was indeed worthy of attention since children were both the fodder for media content and actually consumers of media themselves. And studies I encountered also provided systematic evidence for what parents have known all alongthat children learn about politics and consumption through the media and, in turn, have some considerable influence on their families in this regard.
The impetus for this book produced at The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University was, in part, projects by fellows at the Center studying children and media, notably Gerald Lesser of Harvard and Ellen Wartella of the Universities of Illinois and Texas, both students of children and television. In the process of scoping out prospects for this book, we benefited from the able assistance of Iris Chen, a fellow of the Coro Foundation, who did an internship at the Center. Next, a rigorous roundtable discussion helped us identify "must topics" and "essential authors." Taking part in that were television critic and author Les Brown; Peggy Charren, the spirited founder of Action for Children's Television; Robert Clampett, who created "Children's Express"; sociologist Steven Gorelick of the Graduate School of the City University of New York; author and journalist Don Guttenplan; Karen Jaffe of KIDSNET; Cathy Trost, who heads the Casey Journalism Center for Children and Families at the University of Maryland; Rosemarie Truglio, an expert on children and media at Columbia's Teacher's College in New York; journalist Joanne Wasseraian of the New York Daily News, who actually covers children for the mass audience, and Judy Wessler of the Children's Defense Fund New York Child Health Project. To these generous and creative thinkers, we are grateful.
I am indebted to co-editor Ted Pease for his efforts in operationalizing and editing the Media Studies Journal volume on which this book is based. Also deserving commendation are the Journal's associate editor, Lisa DeLisle, and editorial assistants Nathaniel Daw and Jennifer Kelly. As always, my superb assistant Gate Dolan played a key role in working with many parties involved in this book.
As always, this volume and others we have done with Transaction Publishers owes inspiration and support to Irving Louis Horowitz, who believed this was a worthwhile venture and greatly encouraged our efforts.
Everette E. Dennis
Senior Vice President,
The Freedom Forum
Arlington, Va.
December 1995
"And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons , and to receive in their minds for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they're grown up?"
Plato
The Republic
"A child should always say what's true And speak when he is spoken to.... "
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Whole Duty of Children
In large part, the mass media are produced by adults, for adults, about adults. That's true of virtually all forms of media, print and electronic, from books to on-line databases. The very mention of children and the media conjures up a marginal image somewhere out on the periphery of the media world of grown-ups. There are and always have been exceptions, of course, ranging from children's books and magazines to newspaper supplements and children's television, not to mention recorded music, video games and other new media applications. Still, these media have always stayed on a limited reservation, playing a secondary role in institutions and industries largely run by, concerned with and aimed at adults.
