Making Visible the Invisible: The Role of Editing in Media Analysis and Language Arts
The National Association for Media Literacy Education's
Journal of Media Literacy Education
Voices from the Field: Making Visible the Invisible: The Role of Editing in Media Analysis and Language Arts
John Golden 0 1
0 Portland Public Schools , Portland, OR , USA
1 Media Education Lab. Copyright and Fair Use. Temple University
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Introduction we need to look at media products is to look closely
Editing is probably the most important ….no, at their construction and ask questions about how they
that’s not right. Too boring for an opening. How about have been edited in order to create particular effects.
this... In order to understand the role of editing in me- Most media editing is benign, like the revising of my
dia analysis, we must …nope, no good either. Let’s see. first paragraph or the cutting out of bloopers, but
someCome on, you can do this. In any media product, edit- times the addition of an interview of a particular
celebriing is like the thief wiping down his fingerprints before ty or the insertion of a specific song can carry important
leaving the scene of the crime. Better, but a little too messages intended to influence our consumer, political,
harsh? Analyzing media without understanding editing and personal decision making. We have to be able to
is a bit like analyzing a novel without understanding the ask ourselves the following questions about any media
alphabet. Yeah, perfect! product: why am I seeing this, what is included in what I
If all goes well with publication, the editors of am seeing, what is excluded, and what are the effects of
this journal will have eliminated any sign of my strug- these choices? It is unnecessary, according to the
NAMgle to write the opening line of the article, and only the LE Core Principles of Media Literacy Education, to ask
last complete sentence in the paragraph above will ap- IF a media product has a bias (trust me, it does), but the
pear in the final draft. The reader, then, is left with the better question to consider is, “WHAT the substance,
impression of my easy eloquence and (hopefully) de- source, and significance of a bias might be.”
cides to continue reading the rest of the piece because Because it is considered a field of study and not a
they’ve concluded I may have something interesting to discipline, media literacy does not always seem to have
say. But how did you, the reader, come to this conclu- a permanent home anywhere in the curriculum.
Sepasion? And would you have felt the same if not for the rate stand-alone media literacy courses are rare, and its
editing? What if you’d seen how I struggled? key concepts tend to be spread throughout a variety of
According to the core principles put forward disciplines: Health, Social Studies, Language Arts,
Vidby the National Association for Media Literacy Educa- eo Production, Journalism, Fine Arts, and so on.
tion (NAMLE), media literacy “requires active inquiry I am a high school English teacher, and in my career,
and critical thinking about the messages we receive and I have found that the concept that “all media are
concreate.” Too often, we do not actively consider how structed” and all of the NAMLE Core Principles infuse
specific media messages are constructed and for what perfectly in everything I am expected to do with my
purposes. There are creators behind the production Language Arts standards. Students use similar
deconof newspaper stories, music videos, movies, and yes, struction strategies for taking apart a print
advertiseeven articles in journals about media literacy. And the ment as they do with a short story by Hawthorne. In
creators of these media products have points of view, fact, my main goals as an English teacher are to give my
values and purposes that might not be so apparent on students the power to analyze critically a wide variety
the surface. So, one of the most important ways that of types of text (print, visual, audio, digital, and others)
and to create texts that effectively communicate their Part One: Getting Started
points of view, which sounds a whole lot like what me- Step One:
dia literacy educators seek to do. The first place I ask students to begin
consider
The classroom-tested activities that follow ad- ing the role of editing is right in my own classroom.
dress these overlapping NAMLE Core Principles and One of my favorite activities is to give a digital camera
Language Arts goals by making students aware of the to one student and ask him or her to take pictures for the
effect of the often-invisible editing and construction whole period. The student should take as many pictures
that occurs. When they understand these effects, stu- as possible of me, other students, objects around the
dents can become active and critical consumers of the room, etc. At first, the other students and I are clearly
media messages that they too often receive only pas- posing for the camera, but after a few minutes and a
sively. They need the power not only to read and inter- hund (...truncated)