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SESSION B.4 : TRAINER'S NOTES.

ETHICS AND PROGRAMMING.

Objectives:

Studying media ethics as values.
Reviewing how mainstream media deals with sensitive or contentious issues.
And how community media might deal with them differently.

For many years we have had available to us audience research figures that imply the penetrating influence of the media on our society.

These media are now all pervasive. They influence the way we spend our leisure time, the way we buy things and they influence the values of our culture.

U.S. statistics show how pervasive the media have become.

(Get local figures.)

Such as:

Television sets and radios outnumber refrigerators in our society.
By the age of 18, the average child has watched 25,000 hours of television, more than any other activity except sleep.
Young people spend more time with the TV than with school friends, or parents.
By age 20 they will have experienced some 35,000 commercials, 15,000 violent deaths and 7,000 situations involving sexual predicaments.
And perhaps of more importance, almost the entire content of this output will have been to reinforce an ideology.

We should consider the quantitative way the media form the quality of our lives.

Currently, it is asserted that the media surpass the influences of the schools the churches and even the family. They affect all aspects of life; they create and sustain the values of modern society. Such power should not operate without an ethical base. But have the media an ethics of broadcasting?

This module could usefully examine some issues relating to programming and discuss how the media, or a particular programme should ethically deal with these issues.

Materials:

Some case studies. (Four are provided.)
Flip chart paper and markers.

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