Assignment #1

I think that overall, most media content increases your level of media literacy. By most, I mean media located in respected newspapers, magazines and on respected television news programs. These sources tend to give you the facts unlike Us Weekly which gives you gossip about celebrities and make a big deal about pointless topics. If you were to pick up an issue of the USA Today you would not find continuous articles about how a certain female celebrity keeps gaining weight, because in reality she is still skinnier than a normal sized woman. If you were to read TIME magazine you would not open every issue to find pointless gossip that fills each and every page. I’m not saying that some people don’t think that these things are important, because I know they do. I’m saying that if you only read the tabloids and nothing else you are not increasing your media literacy. To increase your media literacy I feel you need to be familiar with more than one source. If you only read the tabloids, then you should try watching the news every night or pick up the business section of the newspaper and read a couple of articles. I feel that you need to be well rounded in order to increase your media literacy and you can’t just stick to one type of media. Technology has become advanced that you can have every aspect of media at your fingertips anytime of the day, so it isn’t very hard to broaden your horizon.
One reason you should be familiar with different forms of media is that you may not be able to portray the same message from a magazine or newspaper article than you would from a commercial or news program. If an article is printed that I describing an event that took place, you might not be able to understand it as well as if you saw the news and there was a video clip of it taking place. This might lead to confusion, because if two people have a discussion about an event and one person read an article and the other watched a clip on the news, the person who watched it might be more educated about the story. Not only did this person hear the news, but they saw the event take place where the other person did not. If one person were to read an article about a certain celebrity in the Life section in the USA Today and another read one on the same celebrity is Us Weekly, the person who read Us Weekly could be miss informed, because the articles tend to stretch the truth and contain gossip. If these two people were to have a conversation about this celebrity, the person who read Us Weekly could give the other false information and not know it is not the truth.
There are many different forms of media in the world to choose from. As an educated college student you should be able to choose which forms give you truthful information and help increase your media literacy, like the World News and USA Today and which forms confuse you and decrease the chances of becoming more literate, like Us Weekly and other tabloids.