Activity/Reading Week.
Reading week came as quite a shock to me, largely because I didn’t read up on what it was and expected it to be a ‘working’ holiday, similar to most university courses. As such, a few family plans had already been made, but most were rescheduled and anything missed was caught up on, so it was not a problem.
Our lecturers had decided the week was to complete the bulk of 101MC, and this included many seminars and lectures on different aspects on improving ourselves, showing our abilities, and showing us new techniques in the field of Journalism and Media. Day one certainly helped on work and tasks which I was not fully understanding, and as such, was a practical and useful day, equally displayed during the rest of the week.
Spencer, our Media based lecturer, undertook the teaching of the first lecture of the Monday morning, focusing on writing critical film reviews. As luck would have it, this was focused on in my previous A level Media course, and most of the information given was familiar at the very least. Many points were made which enlightened me a lot more on the subject, as courses are designed to be a progression from A level, and the progression I did not find too steep to keep up with. Focusing on real evidence and real relevance in the points made about films in the review was important, I learned, and this has helped me with the Asian Film Reviews to not simply write ‘This scene was a good scene because’, and to write it professionally. Jon, Journalism lecturer, had a similar critical lecture, and these tasks both benefitted and interested me, due to subconcious metaphorical thinking and interesting viewpoints on reflecting, with many points being made which I had never even begun to learn before.
As a side note, while many student blogs contain work done on Photoshop on day one, I was excused by Shelley for this task due to undertaking a Photoshop development course for my Advantage Module.
The bulk of the rest of the week contained work on under-represented groups in the media. Given the task of finding a group, be it a disability, a gender, a race, or even a style of living, I set upon picking my idea for the project. As a group, it was decided that very view groups were represented in the media except traditional stereotypes, or clean cut, well spoken individuals who were accepted in society. I researched work on Journalists in the United Kingdom, predominantly in the field of televised, broadcast journalism, and made two observations.
Firstly, disabilities were few and far between in any televised program with employed presenters. Most newsreaders, reporters, correspondants and presenters were of good health, wore suits and smart hair, and had no physical or mental disabilities of any sort. In fact, only two people could be found with any disabilities ever appearing as, and one was as a ‘shocking world first.
Cerrie Burnell, pictured HERE, is a Cbeebies childrens presenter, and was born with one arm. However, she has faced criticism (Source) due to ‘scaring children’. James Partridge, pictured and bio’d HERE, is the first disfigured presenter of the news due to an explosion burning his face as a teenager. The struggle for their jobs is described as being almost impossible, and the fact these are ‘firsts’ just show how under-represented any disability is, in this case phsyical ones. There are scores of websites and webforums which criticise the companies for using these people due to scaring viewers, being unfair for viewers to be made to view these people, and many far more disgusting comments to be posted on here.
Disgusting, I found to be the key word in this research. If I could count how many presenters I have ever seen on television in my life, it would probably amass to over a thousand. The fact that two people on mainstream English TV have ever managed to get a job is disgusting. I can understand the reality of having, for example, a blind man commentating a football match, but a woman with one arm who simply has to read stories and talk to children, has no reason to be discriminated against or overlooked. This is equally true for any loss of limbs in presenting, and any scarring or disfigurement. If somebody can hear and understand the news being read, the reader could just be a head for all it matters.
This week taught me a lot, and opened my eyes to a huge section of the media which I often have overlooked. Where I previously thought nothing of either seeing or not seeing a disabled person on television, it now makes me aware of when they are absent from programs, or how important it is for them when they do appear.
