{"id":221373,"date":"2022-10-10T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=221373"},"modified":"2022-10-06T04:37:36","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T03:37:36","slug":"the-military-industrial-media-complex-wants-you-to-be-more-media-iliterate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/10\/the-military-industrial-media-complex-wants-you-to-be-more-media-iliterate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Military Industrial Media Complex Wants You to Be More Media (I)Literate!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4 Oct 2022 – <\/em>A September 2022 report<\/span><\/a> from Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>titled \u201cBuilding Resiliency: Media Literacy as a Strategic Defense Strategy for the Transatlantic<\/i>,<\/b>\u201d read like a blueprint for how to indoctrinate students in corporatism and militarism under the auspices of\u00a0 <\/span>media literacy education. Jolls received a Fulbright-NATO Security Studies Award to study \u201caspects of the current information ecosystem and the state of media literacy in NATO countries.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For historical context, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created after World War II during the Cold War and has long since outlived its stated purpose of stopping the spread of communism. Indeed, as political sociologists such as Peter Phillips<\/span><\/a> have noted, NATO has morphed into a global army that engages in questionable conflicts and other human rights abuses in an effort to serve the \u201ctransnational capitalist class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like the crisis of \u201cfake news,\u201d media literacy can and is being weaponized by organizations and individuals seeking to increase their power by influencing the public\u2019s perception of reality. For example, Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist for President Donald Trump has a long history of spreading<\/span><\/a> false<\/span><\/a> information<\/span><\/a>. Form 2012-18, he was the executive chairman of Breitbart\u2019s <\/i>website which has been caught manipulating<\/span><\/a> videos<\/span><\/a>, manufacturing<\/span><\/a> stories<\/span><\/a>, and spreading<\/span><\/a> baseless<\/span><\/a> conspiracies<\/span><\/a>. Starting with Bannon\u2019s tenure, Breitbart <\/i>published articles lauding media literacy<\/span><\/a> as a way to combat \u201cfake news,\u201d while touting that its founder, Andrew Breitbart, integrated media literacy<\/span><\/a> into the platform. However, their consistent spreading of false information seems to run counter to traditional definitions of media literacy.<\/p>\n

The standard U.S. definition<\/span><\/a> of media literacy is \u201cthe ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.\u201d In response to the post-2016 moral panic over fake news, there was a demand for more media literacy education in schools. This provided a window of opportunity for media companies<\/span><\/a> \u2013 which had long sought to enter the classroom to advertise products and collect student data- to move at rapid speed to indoctrinate students with their corporate propaganda.<\/p>\n

Jolls\u2019 report aids these efforts by arguing that corporations\u2019 \u201callocations for media literacy education are few and far between.\u201d Jolls\u2019 report speaks to the military industrial complex when it calls for \u201cfunding and programming from all corners: government, foundations, and the private sector (tech and media companies, other corporations).\u201d The military industrial complex refers to the relationship between the military and related defense and national security industries. In fact, Big-Tech<\/span><\/a> emerged from<\/span><\/a> and continues to serve the same military industrial complex.<\/p>\n

Rather than advocate for a critical<\/i> media literacy education<\/span><\/a> that would account for the power dynamics invested in NATO and its long history<\/span><\/a> of working against democracy and social justice, Jolls\u2019 lauds the \u201c<\/span>values that NATO states\u201d arguing that they represent an \u201cexcellent foundation\u201d for \u201cmedia literacy initiatives.\u201d<\/span> To normalize NATO values in the educational process, Jolls suggests what amounts to a psychological operations campaign (PSYOP) to spread NATO\u2019s version of media literacy to the public through \u201cmass media, media aggregators such as AP, Reuters and LexisNexis, social media and influencers.\u201d The report calls on NATO to \u201cnurture grassroots efforts,\u201d which sounds more like astroturfing<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jolls\u2019 report ignores that members of the very same military and intelligence community that she lauds have been producing and spreading fake news to U.S. citizens from Operation Mockingbird<\/span><\/a> in the 20<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> century up through the present on various social media<\/span><\/a> platforms<\/span><\/a>. It dismisses the public\u2019s rejection of empowering the military industrial complex to determine truth for the citizenry. For example, in 2022, <\/span>critics from the\u00a0left<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0right<\/span><\/a>\u00a0successfully<\/span><\/a> lobbied to have the<\/span> Department of Homeland Security scrap its Disinformation Governance Board<\/span><\/a> because it was reminiscent of the\u00a0Ministry of Truth\u00a0<\/span><\/a>in George Orwell\u2019s\u00a01984<\/i><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Chief Kaylor spoke with media representatives from Ariana and Azzizi television studios in Afghanistan about the steps required for media members to become embedded with a forward operating military unit, 2010.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jeff Nevison)<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead, Jolls is following the lead of similar media literacy projects from the military industrial complex such as the NewsGuard<\/span> browser extension. Known as an \u201cInternet Trust Tool,\u201d NewsGuard<\/span>\u2019s Advisory Board includes numerous people who served in the military and intelligence community as well as bureaucrats known for opposing the interests of educators. Yet, NewsGuard<\/span> positions itself as an objective tool for educators while its rating system is ideologically driven. It touts the legitimacy of establishment and legacy media sources that echo the status quo \u2013 even when they have been proven to spread false information \u2013 and downgrades independent and alternative media outlets that challenge powerful institutions of government, industry, and the military. Jolls\u2019 mirrors NewsGuard\u2019s top-down approach to media literacy education calling on NATO leaders to<\/span> determine \u201cthe intent and purposes for media literacy interventions\u201d by choosing the \u201c<\/span>social problem or behavior or ideology\u201d or issue for educators to focus on.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is clear that we do need a critical media literacy<\/span><\/a> curriculum<\/span><\/a> in the U.S., but that is not what Jolls and her ilk are promoting. A true media literacy education empowers students to be autonomous and sophisticated media users, who ask their own questions about who controls media messaging and interrogate the power structures behind them. When a student is left dependent on the military industrial complex to analyze content for them, it is not education, it is indoctrination.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Nolan Higdon\u00a0is a national judge for\u00a0<\/em>Project Censored<\/a>\u00a0and a frequent contributor to their yearly book,\u00a0<\/em>State of the Free Press. He is a lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon\u2019s areas of concentration include digital culture, news media history, and critical media literacy. He is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas. He sits on the boards of the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME) and Northwest Alliance for Alternative Media And Education. His most recent publications include <\/em>The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education\u00a0(UC Press, 2020) and\u00a0<\/em>The Podcaster\u2019s Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasters in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism\u00a0(Wiley, 2021). In addition, he has been a contributor to <\/em>Truthout and <\/em>CounterPunch; a source of expertise for numerous news outlets, including <\/em>The New York Times, CNBC, and<\/em> San Francisco Chronicle.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – projectecensored.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Oct 2022 – A true media literacy education empowers students to be autonomous and sophisticated media users, who ask their own questions about who controls media messaging and interrogate the power structures behind them. When a student is left dependent on the military industrial complex to analyze content for them, it is not education, it is indoctrination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":221380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2314,1138,1748,1126,1050,1855,2462,2571,112,372,95,1365,481],"class_list":["post-221373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-corporate-media","tag-fake-news","tag-fake-report","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pentagon","tag-propaganda","tag-us-military","tag-war-journalism","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}