Summary: The world is quickly becoming saturated with information, entertainment, and advertisements. In this program, academic and industry experts examine the globalization of information exchange, the way in which it has altered the social distance between nations and individuals, and the future of mass media. In the U.S., viewers watch an average of 4.5 hours per day of television, willingly lending...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Is a political candidate's past personal life fodder for the front page? If a child commits murder, should the offender's name be released? If a CD by a top recording artist has strongly antisocial lyrics, should the record label consider its impact on kids? In this program, news professionals and executives from NBC, CBS, Capitol-EMI Records, and Mercury Records speak out about the ethical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Tabloid journalism. Kinky TV talk shows. "Gangsta" rap music. Sexually explicit and violent movies. The media have established new outposts in the frontiers of taste that were thought impossible 30 years ago, and all in the name of First Amendment rights and giving the public what it wants. But with these rights come responsibilities that are seldom respected. What leverage can society use...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: When it comes to today's important public policy issues, the opportunity to be heard depends on whether you can afford it. In this program, Bill Moyers and key legal and public interest advocates examine how industries with deep pockets use their access to the media to overwhelm the public debate, from North Carolina's hog industry to the defeat of the McCain Tobacco Bill to the passage of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Most people rely on television newscasts to keep them informed. Yet, a recent Gallup poll says that only 21 percent of Americans rated television media as "very or mostly honest. Faced with declining ratings, increased competition, and intensified attention to the bottom line, television news organizations have been criticized for turning daily newscasts into "info-tainment. This program...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Why are television shows created with such a high level of violence, and how are viewers affected by it? In this program, George Gerbner, of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, and other media experts provide insightful commentary on both blatant and subtle TV violence. Drawn from one week of television programming, video clips fall into five main areas:...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program emphasizes the seductive nature of films and television. The pervasiveness and sheer volume of electronic images in daily life make it extremely difficult for viewers to discern fact from fiction, as with Oliver Stone's controversial JFK. The manufactured reality of films and TV also plays a role in popularizing certain behaviors-some of which are unhealthy or antisocial, like...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: There's a fine art to selling earlobe lifts, inflatable massage boots, and mini-staircases for arthritic dogs. This ABC News program enters the strange world of A. J. Kubani and his New Jersey-based company, Telebrands-a purveyor of quirky household products showcased in late-night TV infomercials. In a one-on-one interview, Kubani discusses his main strategy: identifying a mundane, irksome...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1911, the first newsreels flickered in America's nickelodeons. In the mid-1960s, they vanished from movie theaters as nightly television newscasts came to dominate visual journalism. In between, newsreels grew into a unique 20th-century institution that informed and entertained whole generations. In this program, Bill Moyers conducts a tour of the cultural and political landscape so...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: As this Bill Moyers program makes clear, television became another member of the family in the 1960s, both reflecting and influencing the era. The times were chaotic and TV whirled us into that chaos while also holding up a mirror to it: the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo moon landing, the saga of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The public mind is often deceived by those who manipulate it, and it deceives itself, as well. This program examines how deception has influenced some of the major events of our recent past and how self-deception shapes our personal lives and the public mind. Why do trusted people in public life lie to us and to themselves? Can a society die from too many lies? Do our institutions demand...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Some stories are simply too good to be true. In this program, John Kampfner, political editor for the New Statesman (London), skewers heroic reports of the ambush, capture, and rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, calling them misrepresentations designed to bolster wavering support for the Iraq War. Kampfner also scrutinizes the controversial practice of embedding members of the news media in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: While the earliest motion pictures were admired simply for their novelty, viewers soon demanded more than raw footage of trains, sneezes, and other random subjects. This program describes the discovery of sex as a surefire cinematic attraction and the outrages it provoked among religious and civic authorities during Hollywood's formative years. Documenting the rise of William Hays as the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program looks at the impact of the visual image on news and politics in the electing of Presidents and the governing of America. While projecting a self-serving image has long been an understandable part of American politics, the 1980s produced a marriage of sophisticated news manipulation by political candidates and a willingness of the news media to dance to the candidate's tune. To what...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: As Bill Cosby did for African-Americans, comedian George Lopez has worked to "normalize" the image of Latinos through television. This documentary offers behind-the-scenes access to Lopez' life as he shares his struggles to represent his community-not in a way that knuckles under to marketers, but in a manner true to the realities of Latino culture while embracing the potential of the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
De Botton, Alain.
Summary: Presents a philosophical assessment of the role of news in today's gadget-driven societies, exploring subjects ranging from politics and crime to celebrities and paparazzi while considering how the news shapes everyday worldviews.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Random House Inc 2014
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 302.23 BOTSummary: The Bush administration marketed and sold the war in Iraq to the American people. How and why did the press buy it, and what does that say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda? In this program, veteran journalist Bill Moyers, award-winning producer Kathleen Hughes, and their investigative team piece together the reporting and political spin that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The development of authentic self-esteem and a healthy sense of self has always been a vitally important part of growing up. But this process is a challenge that has gotten even trickier to negotiate due to the widespread integration of digital technology into everyday living. Drawing on the insights of a clinical psychologist/family therapist, an adolescent psychologist, and a number of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: As globalization of trade rapidly expands, the mainstream media is being accused of inadequately reporting the issues. This program canvasses some of the dissent by exploring conflicts of interest within the media and showing how technology, such as the camcorder and the Internet, is challenging the monopoly of big news broadcasters. Differences between mainstream and "indie" media are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the power of professional pollsters to influence public opinion. Public opinion pollsters and market researchers serve virtually every facet of American culture. Nearly everyone-from the makers of cake mix to television executives and candidates for public office-seeks to become the intimate of our private opinions for the purposes of their own strategies. In the hands of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: No single force has changed American politics more than television-especially the television commercial. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the phenomenon of the "30-second president" and the role of advertising in 20th-century American politics. The video features an interview with Rosser Reeves, an advertising executive who worked on early political television campaigns for Dwight D....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program looks at a society inundated with visual images. From billboards to bus stops, from rock videos to newsstands, mass-produced images have become the very air we breathe. What is this cultural atmosphere saying to us and about us? Why should we care? Ever since the pioneers of public relations and advertising spoke about the "engineering of consent," social critics have analyzed its...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Tapping phone calls, paying informers, planting microphones, trespassing, purchasing information obtained illegally: it's all in a day's work for the paparazzi. Filmed in England, France, and Italy, this program introduces viewers to unscrupulous photographers prepared to go to practically any length to shoot celebrities and politicians unaware-including Antonio Zappadu, the man responsible for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010