Bad Headlines Cause Brain Damage

I've already talked about how upset I was to discover how sensational news has become. I mentioned news bias, but I didn't really get into it. It is generally not something that I have an issue with. In my opinion, it is a side effect of things that I think are good, so I just try to be aware of it. More often than not, I actually find it entertaining. One of my favorite assignments as an undergrad was on news bias. We were given the headlines from a dozen different papers across the country on the same event. We had to write out the political party of the paper and the connotations created by their headline. I am sharing all of this to explain why I am surprised by how upset I am about a headline I recently read. Some other factors that might be fueling my disgust are that one of the journalist's sources is the Joan Ganz Cooney Center which is the new research center of Sesame Workshop, and the article completely betrays the study and the purpose of the Cooney Center.

The topic at hand is the the release of the D is for Digital report at the Sandbox Summit in Las Vegas. The Reuters headline was: Joan Ganz Cooney Center Finds Cause For Both Concern and Optimism in Billion Dollar Digital Media Industry Targeting Kids, but the article that has really been bothering me was titled: Under 7's Should be Banned From Playing Computer Games or Risk Damaging Their Brains'. The difference is obvious, and I've seen worse headlines, but this one has just gotten under my skin. The Cooney Center was named after the remarkable woman who created Sesame Street at a time when people were claiming that under 7's should be banned from watching television or risk damaging their brains.

The Daily Mail says, "They looked at more than 300 products including computer games, toys, virtual worlds for children and supposedly educational software to be run on home computers. Of these, only two educational video games employed proven learning techniques." about the D is for Digital findings. Reuters said, "Of the 300+ products studied,...the survey yielded only two education video games based on explicit educational curriculum design available in the market." This may be an educational nuance to some, but in my opinion there is a huge difference between "educational curriculum" and "proven learning techniques." Here is an example based on my understanding. Repetition is a proven learning technique, however having repetition does not mean you have an educational curriculum. Based on The Workshop Model, having a curriculum would be best, but that does not mean that a lack of curriculum leads to brain damage.

The mission of the Cooney Center is, "to catalyze and support research, innovation and investment in digital media technologies to advance children's learning." I do not speak on behalf of The Workshop or the Cooney Center, but it seems to me, based on the history of Sesame Street and the development of this new center, that they strive to help these 300+ educational products incorporate an appropriate and research supported educational curriculum. I am upset that their research has been warped into something that could scare parents away from good resources.

Sensational

As a freshman and sophomore, I spent very little time in my dorm room, but my tv was always on. With the exception of the semester that I had a roommate hooked on BET, CNN was always on. They said generally the same 15 minutes of news repeatedly all day long. There was also the scrolling update bar on the bottom that I could focus on if they were saying something that I had already heard. At the time it was the perfect way for me to get my news. I could pickup a story or two in between classes, or I could quickly get a full update after dinner.

After I moved off campus, it became easier to drive to campus during an NPR hourly update. When I moved back on to campus, I didn't go back to CNN. I spent a couple months trying to keep up with the news online, but I have to admit, I prefer to have someone else package it up and get it ready for me. When the hubby bought me an ipod everything became perfect again. I have several NPR shows set to automatically download and I enjoy listening to them at my leisure (often while I knit).

This past week without internet in my residence hall left me without NPR podcasts, so I sought out an old friend in CNN. It is different now. The format is generally the same, but the content is now (outrageously) sensational. I should have noticed this when I watched it in Kentucky. I remember feeling uncomfortable with it, but the major news story at the time was the trapped miners and I had convinced myself that they were just doing a poor job of trying to continue conveying the urgency of the situation (as days passed by with no news). I was making unwarranted excuses for them.

I've always been sensitive to biases in my news sources, and I've been taught that sensationalizing is a way of being biased. This was different though. People or topics weren't sensationalized. The whole presentation was just at a different level than I remember. It felt like a used car commercial not a news story. It had reached the point of insulting. Whether it was more insulting to the viewer or the subject of the story is debatable, but either way, I was disappointed.


A related anecdote that I don't have a proper transition for:
In Europe, I watched a lot of British news. While I was in Spain, Paris Hilton was going in and out of jail. One evening the newscaster began her story of Paris being released (the first time), and her co-anchor stopped her and asked, "Why are we reporting on this?" She didn't fully shrug her shoulders, but her body language became clearly unimpressed and slightly annoyed, and she answered, "Because this is all that they are talking about in the US." While we were making fun of Paris for going to jail, the rest of the world was making fun of us for caring.