Professors encourage media awareness
By: Christian Losciale
Issue date: 10/16/08 Section: News
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of the Gateway Media Literacy Partners, a regional organization designed to teach media literacy, celebrating its fifth year and second annual Media Literacy Week. The week's kickoff event hosted GMLP members at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 12 in the University
Center Sunnen Lounge.
Given the week's theme, Media
Literacy: A Survival Skill, Brown said the primary goal of the week is to promote media
literacy and its education.
"There is so much good about media, but we need to understand that communicators
have messages," she said.
Recognizing the messages and analyzing them is not bashing
or censoring the media, she said - it's arming oneself for the media's myriad messages. Brown, an adjunct professor at Webster University, looked around the room at fellow GMLP members and smiled.
"This (type of event) doesn't happen overnight," she said.
Art Silverblatt, GMLP's vice president and a WU full-time professor in the communications
and journalism department,
said GMLP is a prototype
for the country. No other group cooperates regionally to hold events throughout a week.
"The goal of the week is to develop a critical distance from your media," Silverblatt said.
He then officially started the week by talking about the events and their objectives.
"What we're really teaching
people is a process - how to think, not what to think," he said. "Media literacy is not an elective, it is a survival skill."
Silverblatt introduced Interim
President Neil George, who said Silverblatt has always been a catalyst for many ideas. Silverblatt smiled and nodded.
George said that the public
does not always understand what media it consumes and that is why he is glad to see an advocacy group like GMLP. He welcomed the organization
to WU.
Brown spoke at the podium next. She and Silverblatt presented proclamations from the Missouri
governor, state senate, City of St. Louis, St. Louis County and City of St. Charles declaring the week of Oct. 12-18 Media Literacy Week.
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