Critical Focus: A Forum on Media Today

Project Description

CRITICAL FOCUS: A Forum on Media Today is a series of six one-hour TV programs investigating how representations in the media affect culture, politics, and behavior. Each episode features a diverse panel of experts from academia, journalism, the broadcast industry, and social action agencies assessing the impact of media on our society.

The topics for the six episodes are:
Episode 1:    Media and War
Episode 2:    Growing Up with Media.  How media and youth are shaping each other.
Episode 3:    Gender, Sexuality, and Stereotypes in the Media
Episode 4:    How Media Ownership Affects Content
Episode 5:    Race and Media
Episode 6:    Changing the Media

Program Structure

This project is jointly produced by Somerville Community Access Television (SCAT) and Cambridge Community Television (CCTV). The six programs are cablecast live on alternate months from the SCAT and CCTV studios, streamed live on the Internet, and recorded on DVD for distribution to other community TV stations across the country. During the live cablecast, members of the studio audience are invited to ask questions of the panel, and viewers watching from home may phone or email in their questions.

Project Purpose

The purpose of this series is to engage viewers in thinking critically about the information and imagery they encounter in the mass media. Mass media imagery, produced by corporations for profit, is ubiquitous. The messages portrayed on billboards, in magazines, TV, the movies, and newspapers shape our ideas of beauty, fairness, gender roles, personal security, financial expectations, and more. An understanding of the media is vital to American society and democracy because of the media’s power to persuade and distract, to manufacture desire and acceptance. Only educated citizens can make independent and thoughtful decisions about what they purchase, how they vote, what they believe, and how they lead their lives.

About the Producers

CRITICAL FOCUS: A Forum on Media Today is an exciting new collaboration between two neighboring community TV stations with long and distinguished records of innovative programming and effective community service. In addition to the dozens of awards each station has won over the years, Cambridge Community Television has received the nation’s highest award for public access TV stations, the Overall Excellence Award in Public Access Programming from the Alliance for Community Media, a total of six times in its 17-year history.   Somerville Community Access Television has received this award three times in its history.

Contact Us!

For more information, please contact:
Wendy Blom, SCAT:       617-628-8826            scatdir (at) rcn.com
John Donovan, CCTV:    617-661-6900 x123    john (at) cctvcambridge.org

Order the Series on DVD

The entire "Critical Focus" series is now available on DVD for individual viewing, use in classrooms, and display on public and educational access cable TV stations and other public venues nationwide. The cost is $10.00 per episode, or $50.00 for the complete 6-DVD set.  DVD's can be ordered online at http://www.cctvcambridge.org/stores.