channel one: the dilemma of teaching and selling

Channel One: The Dilemma of Teaching and SellingAuthor(s): Jerome JohnstonSource: The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 76, No. 6 (Feb., 1995), pp. 436-442Published by: Phi Delta Kappa InternationalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20405364 .

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-NX The Dilemma of

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?{Z) x, o I It is unfortunate that the deliberations of educators and others about the value of Channel One to the educational enterprise should be influenced by the current method used to pay for it, Mr. Johnston maintains.

, ~~By Jerome Johnston J N THE SPRING of 1990 Whittle Communications launched Channel One an

ambitious effort aimed at infusing schools with video technology and innovative news programming. By the spring of 1993 the number of schools electing to re ceive Channel One stood at approximately 12,000. This translates to an audience of more than eight million teens - or almost 40% of the 12- to 1 8-year-olds in

the United States who are attending school. Few educational innovations have received as much attention from the press. The

clippings from three years of newspaper coverage around the country form a stack

well over 10 feet high! For the most part, the stories have focused on the two minutes of commercials that pay for the 10 minutes of news. Very few articles make any at

tempt to examine the benefit of viewing the news or to weigh this benefit against the "cost" of having students watch commercials in the classroom.

In this article I focus on what students can learn from watching the news and what teachers and principals in Channel One schools think of the news program and the ancillary services. The views expressed are based on three years of research (from the fall of 1990 through the spring of 1993), during which a team of us from the Univer

sity of Michigan and InterwestApplied Research tracked Channel One's impact in 156 schools around the country.' Finally, I consider whether these findings justify the "cost" of the commercial exposure.

What Is Channel One?

A school that contracts with Channel One Communications receives a satellite dish, two videotape recorders for automatic recording of the televised broadcasts, and net

worked televisions for every classroom. The network supplies three different types of programming. Channel One - the centerpiece of the network - is a daily 12-minute newscast designed for schoolwide rebroadcasting to students in grades 6 through 12.

M N _ ~~~~~~~The program is produced every day in Los Angeles. Each night it is uplinked to a

_ , ~~~~~~~~~JEROME JOHNSTON is an associate research scientist at the Inst it ute for Social Research ax ~~~~~~~~~and an adjunct professor in the School of Education and the Department of Communication at

\< A _ ~~~~~~~the University of Michigan, Ann Arbo,;

R n cj~~Q Illustrtion byJem Sullivan - ~ _FE1BRUARY 1995 437

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satellite and transmitted to every subscribing school. The broad cast is preceded by a signal that turns on the recorder in each school. By 6 a.m. the news show is available for preview and retransmission throughout the school building at a time select ed by the school.

Two additional offerings from the network make use of the same array of equipment. Every day that Channel One is trans

mitted, a block of instructional videos is transmitted over the Classroom Channel. This block is a collection of programs se lected by the Pacific Mountain Network to cover popular top ics in the school curriculum, ranging from mathematics and science to counseling and foreign language instruction. Typi cally a school records and catalogs these programs for future use by individual teachers. The Educators' Channel has only oc casional broadcasts; these are on topics of professional interest to educators.

Over the years the Channel One news program has varied in format and content as its producers have searched for the best formula for their target audiences. The shows from the 1992-93 school year are typical of the current formula. On av erage during that year, 6Y minutes were devoted to news sto ries similar to those covered by all the major network news shows. On the international scene, extensive coverage was giv en to Somalia, Bosnia, and the breakup of the Soviet Union. On the national scene, there was regular coverage of political developments in Washington (the Presidential election, the Bush/Clinton transition, Clinton's handling of the economy) and of such high-profile events as the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas. The remaining program time included science stories (endan gered species, space exploration, hurricanes) and stories of in terest to teens, such as specials on AIDS, children of alcoholics, and life in college. There were also occasional sports stories.

In general, Channel One follows the journalistic norms and conventions used by all national news media in presenting the news. The stories differ from their counterparts on the broadcast networks in two ways. First, the lead-in to the stories is done by young-looking anchors (roughly 18 to 24 years of age) us ing a script that is more "hip" in tone than the one used by Dan

Rather. Second, a teen twist or perspective is frequently added to stories to make them relevant to a teenage audience. For ex ample, in covering the 1992 Presidential campaign, Channel

One included a segment on the reactions of teens to the vari ous candidates. In February 1993, when actions of the Feder al Reserve were having a big impact on the economy, an ex tended story on the Federal Reserve was built around ways in

which teens are affected by the actions of the Federal Reserve (e.g., the price of stereos and the availability of jobs).

The commercials on Channel One during the 1992-93 school year were mostly for snack foods and personal care prod ucts. Other ads were for movies, clothes, and electronic prod ucts. The types of products advertised did not change much over the three years of the study. There was a difference in the num ber of ads with a public-service character -e.g., "stay in school," "stay off drugs" -however. In the first season, 15%o of the ads were public-service oriented (a much higher pro portion than is found on commercial channels). In the 1993-94 season, there were fewer such ads, and most of the ones that did appear carried a "stay off drugs" message and were spon

sored by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Do Teachers Value Channel One?

In the spring of 1993 my colleagues at the Institute for So cial Research and I selected a nationally representative sample of 100 schools from the thousands that were carrying Channel One. We sent a survey to all the teachers in these schools. Their responses showed that a clear majority were happy with the

Channel One programming and equipment. When asked to "grade" Channel One as a news program and as a source of in formation for teens, the teachers gave it between an A- and a

B+. Less than 10% were dissatisfied with the programming. We also asked the teachers whether they would recommend

Channel One to other teachers and schools. Two-thirds of the teachers said that they would "strongly" or "very strongly" rec ommend it. Another quarter of the teachers said that they would recommend it, but "with reservations." Only 7% said that they

would not recommend it. The programming itself was the major attraction for teach

ers. Most of them felt that current events should be a central part of the school curriculum and that Channel One provided good programming in this area. Three out of four teachers found the commercials to be a fair tradeoff for the news program, the other video programming, and the equipment that Channel One provided.

What Do Principals Think?

Principals in these same schools were fairly positive as well. Sixty-one percent of the principals felt that their school's cur rent events materials were better because of the programming on Channel One and on the Classroom Channel. Only one prin cipal felt that the curriculum was weaker with Channel One.

As of May 1993, 76% of the principals in the sample had either already renewed or considered it "very likely" that they would renew their contracts with Whittle Communications for another term when that time came. Twenty percent said that re newal was "somewhat likely"; only 4% said that it was not at all likely. (According to Whittle Communications, of the 4,627 schools whose contracts expired in the summer of 1993, 4,609 renewed for an additional three years.)

Principals said that their decision to subscribe to Channel One was influenced by both the loaned equipment and the video programming. Sixty percent of the schools had used the equip

ment for purposes other than distributing the Whittle programming. The most frequent use was for a daily school news program produced by students.

In short, Channel One and the other elements of the network have favorably impressed most of the educators who have had the closest contact with it.

How Do Students Respond? Across the three years of the study students were generally

quite positive in their ratings of Channel One. In the 1993 sur vey, at least three-quarters of the high school students and even more middle school students felt that the information they learned from viewing Channel One was as valuable as or more

438 PHI DELTA KAPPAN



valuable than other things they were learning in school. The new format that Channel One introduced in the fall of 1992 involving more hard news and a more serious tone was seen as a distinct improvement by at least half of the students.

When asked to rate their interest in various topics covered by Channel One, students rated foreign news and stories about U.S. politics lowest (see Figure 1). These are the stories that typically make up most of what schools call "current events."

But more than three-quarters of the students felt that at least "sometimes" they learned something new from stories on these topics. Across all the topic areas, less than 20% of students felt that they "almost never" learned something new and valuable.

These findings underscore an important point: serious news (po litical developments in this country and abroad) is not intrinsi cally interesting to the majority of adolescents. While teachers overwhelmingly support instruction about current events, the topic is one that most students (and most of their parents) need to be induced to pay attention to.

Middle school students gave slightly higher ratings overall, with regard both to their interest in the shows and to how much they learned from watching them. This suggests that Channel

One meets the needs of middle school students at least as well as it meets the needs of high school students, Channel One's original target audience.

Do students watch the shows attentively, as might be ex pected for a school-based broadcast? Most of the self-reports on attention-paying fall into one of two categories: "usually" pay attention (43%) and "occasionally" pay attention (37%). Observations in many schools indicate that students tend to "graze" - attending carefully to stories of personal interest and paying less attention to stories in which they have lower levels of interest. Not surprisingly, they attend much better if the teacher in the viewing classroom attends and transmits the ex

pectation that students need to do the same.

What Do Students Learn?

During three one-week periods in the winter of 1993, stu dents were tested on their knowledge and recollection of the news of that week. The tests (which had to fit into a 15-minute period) consisted of 15 true/false items pertaining to the major stories covered by both Channel One and other national news

media. During these weeks there were some very high-profile news

stories: the Iraqi incursion into Kuwait, the progress of peace keeping efforts in Somalia, the persistent civil war in Bosnia, and the crumbling of the Soviet empire. Domestic news stories ranged from Clinton' s Cabinet appointments to weather-relat ed disasters around the country.

In studies of some 3,000 students (half of them viewers of Channel One and half of them not), the viewers had scores 5% to 8% higher than the nonviewers. (For example, on one of the tests students in the control group averaged 54%, while Chan nel One viewers averaged 62%.) Results indicate that viewers learned important pieces of information about the topics cov ered, although they did not always acquire a complete under standing of events. For example, viewers were more likely to know that "no-fly zones" had been established over southern Iraq but not to know the reason that they had been established

- that Iraqi troops had entered Kuwait to bring back weapons left behind in the war.

In most weeks Channel One includes a multipart series that examines a current topic in greater depth than does a typi cal news story. During the three weeks in which the testing took place, there was a series on the Federal Reserve and a series on the crumbling of the former Soviet Union. Viewers scored 5%

to IU/o nigher than nonviewers on ques tions about these topics. From the Feder al Reserve series, about 10% more view ers knew the meaning of inflation and the role of the Federal Reserve in stimulating the economy. After seeing the series on the crumbling Soviet empire, between 6% and 15% more viewers knew that ethnic strife was on the rise since the breakup of the Soviet Union, that Georgia and Rus sia were now independent republics, and that people in Georgia and Russia were better off economically than people in other former republics. In short, each week there was a small but consistent ad vantage to viewing just 10 minutes of news each day.

What Do Students Retain?

In the first two years of this study (1990 92), long-term student learning was meas ured in 23 Channel One schools around the country. Each school was paired with a nonparticipating control school. Multi ple-choice tests were constructed to meas

FEBRUARY 1995 439

Figure 1. High School Students' Ratings of Interest in Different Story Types

1 0 00 /...... .......

80/

60/

40%

20%

0% Teen Teen U.S. Sports "You Science Foreign U.S. Living Opportu- News Decide" News Politics

nities

m Not at all interested L A little interested

= Very interested



ure recollection and understanding of the most significant na tional and international events covered by the major national

media, including Channel One. The tests contained 30 to 40 items. Typical means for all students were in the high 60% range. During these years, the average advantage for Channel

One students was small - only about 3% better for viewers

than for nonviewers on a test that covered the previous three

months of news. But there was great variance from school to

school. In some schools students who watched Channel One

knew no more than students who had not watched, while in oth

er schools the viewers outperformed the nonviewers by a large margin as much as 8% to 12%.?

A separate study showed why this happened. The Channel One schools varied from one another in a variety of ways that affected student learning. In the high-performing schools the

students and staff were intrinsically more interested in current

events. Teachers often discussed important news stories with stu

dents, helping them make sense of what they were watching. In these schools the schoolwide broadcast time was more like

ly to be during an extended academic period, rather than dur

ing a homeroom period at the very beginning of the day. Dur

ing academic periods, students are more oriented toward learn

ing, and teachers are more likely to use the news as an in

structional opportunity. In short, the comparisons of schools with high and low levels of learning showed important differ ences in both the characteristics of the viewers and the ways the schools incorporated Channel One into their curricula.

In the third year of the study, the programming for Channel One was revised extensively, and it became a more serious news show. The effect of viewing the new Channel One was studied in five schools that were exemplary in student and faculty in

terest in current events and in faculty use of Channel One pro

gramming. The research was intended to identify what level of

learning is possible in schools with a positive climate for learn

ing. When compared with students in matched nonparticipat ing schools, there was a consistent advantage for viewers of 5% for high school students and 8% for middle school stu dents.'

When this level of advantage from viewing is compared to the benefits achieved with other new curricula and teaching practices in such school domains as mathematics, science, reading, and

writing, the conclusion is clear. In the better-performing schools, viewing the new Channel One had a "moderate to large" effect on students' knowledge of current events. Given the importance that teachers in the national sample placed on students' learning about current events in school, this level of

impact appears to be quite valuable. Extrapolating from find

ings in the best schools leads us to estimate that, in more typ ical schools, where less care is given to how the show is used, the new format should still result in "small but important" ad vantages.

It is useful to compare adolescents' levels of knowledge with those of adults. Various researchers have found quite low lev els of adult knowledge about events that were covered on the TV news anywhere from the same day to several weeks prior to the test. For comprehension of a single evening's news meas ured within two hours of a broadcast, John Robinson and his colleagues found that "the central point of a typical story . .. reached about a third of the audience."5 For a week's worth of

news they found about the same percentage. Vincent Price and John Zaller estimated a higher level: for news events that oc curred anywhere from a few days to a few weeks prior to the point of interview, the average was about 52%.6 Finally, in a recent international survey, Americans scored about 30% on a five-item test, with 37% failing to answer any of the five ques tions correctly.7

All three studies found a great deal of variability in adults' knowledge of individual news items, depending on the topic. In general, it can be said that adult watchers of TV news do not learn a great deal from their viewing. So the scores found for adolescents are really quite good - even for those who do not watch Channel One in school.

Not Everybody Learns

It is clear that learning from a news broadcast is a compli cated matter. High-quality programming is essential but far from sufficient. Several personal characteristics strongly influ ence what any group of students will learn from watching. In our study, the highest levels of learning were associated with high grade-point averages, being male, and being motivated to learn about what's happening in the world a motive that does not become stronger simply by viewing more news shows. I think it comes from parents and teachers cultivating the motive

- that is, modeling an interest in making sense of world events. Most disappointing, perhaps, is the fact that C and D students

learned very little, even in school environments where the gen eral commitment to having students learn about current events was high.

But we shouldn't focus only on student characteristics. Even the students most receptive to learning from a good news pro gram learned much more if they had one or two teachers who discussed the news on a regular though not necessarily dai ly basis and helped them figure out the meaning and im portance of the fragmented stories that make up "the news."

Leveraging Channel One To Improve Civic Education

The daily presence of Channel One in schools around the nation led one social studies educator - David Harris of the Oakland County (Michigan) Schools to work with the pro ducers of Channel One to develop a new broadcast feature that could have special value in social studies classes. Called "You

Decide," these features are produced when a news event rep resents a challenge to a basic tenet of U.S. democracy. For ex

ample, events in Bosnia raise the question of whether the U.S. should intervene in foreign conflicts. Boatloads of Haitians and

Cubans heading for sanctuary in the U.S. raise questions about appropriate stances on immigration. Executions of criminals raise the question of whether the death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment." Stories about students reciting a prayer at a pep rally or graduation ceremony raise the question of whether organized prayer should be allowed in public schools. In five to six minutes, a "You Decide" segment provides an in-depth look at the news item and then presents experts who take dif ferent sides on the issue. Finally, viewers are told, "You de cide."




In a pilot test of "You Decide," a group of high school so cial studies teachers were trained to use a set of teaching strate gies designed to exploit the material in the "You Decide" seg

ments. It was hoped that the combination of the video segment and classroom discussion would provide important civics train ing, that students would become more thoughtful about these important issues and better able to argue one side or the other

with their classmates as preparation for the responsibilities they will be assuming in a few short years when they reach voting age.

In this pilot test there was enough time to teach students about civic discourse, but there was too little time to improve their skills of argumentation significantly. Nonetheless, the training did have several positive outcomes. Students learned to identify some of the characteristics of effective discussions.

They came to appreciate the complexity of most public issues and enjoyed discussing them. Students learned much more about current events - as demonstrated by their test scores,

which were much higher than those of a matched group of stu

dents who simply viewed Channel One. Perhaps most important, extended discussion improved the

scores of two groups that usually do not profit from viewing Channel One. Over the three years of the study, students whose grade-point average was C or lower consistently did not learn

much from watching Channel One. In this experiment, howev er, they did learn, and the gap between the A students and the C students narrowed significantly. Equally important, the gap between girls and boys was no longer significant.

The "You Decide" segments clearly helped teachers set an

agenda for extended discussion of compelling civic issues con

fronting society today. Students liked the "You Decide" seg ments more than the traditional segments in which they were

simply told by news reporters what was happening in the news.8 The "You Decide" segments appear to advance the potential

of school-based news broadcasts by stimulating debate and per haps making the very activity they describe classroom based discussions of public issues more intriguing to social studies teachers around the country. Previous efforts to increase this type of activity in the social studies curriculum have not led to large-scale adoption. The regular appearance of "You

Decide" features in 12,000 schools may be the catalyst need ed to make such a change.

The Bottom Line: Use as Directed

Looking across the wide array of research results from three years of investigation, I believe that the Whittle experiment

must be viewed positively. Teachers and principals are largely supportive of the package. Students learn enough about current events to say that Channel One is helping them acquire valued information about and insights into the world around them. But, as good as the technology may be, to achieve real benefits for students, teachers must be prepared to help students assemble the somewhat fragmented knowledge that we know as "the news" into a coherent picture of world events.

Just as no one would advocate teaching science by having students passively watch "Nova," schools should not expect to teach current events by having students passively watch Chan nel One. The sophisticated equipment package that comes with

Channel One networked televisions in every classroom, videotape recorders, and a satellite dish on the roof can be

very attractive to schools. Budgets are tight for most school dis tricts, and few schools can afford to become as "high tech" as their constituents would like. Thus many districts may see the

Channel One package as a partial solution to the resource prob lem. But, as with all technology, its contribution to education is no better than the programs it transmits and the uses to which those programs are put. It is untenable for a school to sign a contract for Channel One without ensuring that the school's teaching staff is committed to discussing the content of the news, if only occasionally. (See the article by Susan Neuman and Donna Celano in this Kappan.)

What About the Ads?

Channel One is a costly venture. It's no wonder that govern ment agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Education, and quasi-governmental agencies, such as the Corporation for Pub lic Broadcasting, have not invested in such an undertaking. While the actual costs of Channel One are not public, here are some reasonable estimates. The cost of equipment for each school is about $30,000. For 12,000 schools this amounts to more than $350 million in start-up costs! Annual costs include production and distribution of the news program (roughly $12 million) and another $15 million for maintenance of the equipment and pur chase of the video for the Classroom Channel.

These costs and profits for the owners of Channel One are paid for indirectly - by having a captive audience of young people view two minutes of advertising every day. Undoubt edly this exposure influences teen decisions about the products they buy.9 Adults in the 12,000 subscribing schools say that it is a fair tradeoff the benefits are worth the cost. It seems to

me that this is a reasonable stance to take, unless one argues that there should be no advertising of any kind in the schools. But if that is the case, schools should be required to exclude any and all vestiges of commercialism in the schools, including the soft drink ads on the athletic scoreboards, the print ads in class room magazines, and the encouragement-to-read programs supported by many fast-food franchises. (See the article by

Ellen Wartella in this Kappan.)

One Alternative

Some would argue that "CNN Newsroom" is the perfect compromise. Every day, the Cable News Network (CNN) pro duces a 15-minute version of its regular broadcast for use in schools. The show is broadcast in the middle of the night so that schools can record it for use at a convenient time. The pro gram is provided free to every school that can receive basic cable television service. While the program has many merits, it differs from Channel One in several critical ways that limit its utility as a schoolwide daily news program.

First, although the news programming uses somewhat younger anchors than the daytime version of CNN, the script and visuals that accompany each news item are the same as those on the regular CNN show. I argue that it is the story line that ultimately shapes student response to the news, and Chan nel One does a much better job of shaping the script and visu

FEBRUARY 1995 441



als to give teens a reason to want to attend to and make sense out of the news. "CNN Newsroom" adds magazine features to make the show more attractive to the teen audience - for ex ample, a feature on acne or on amateur stargazing. But this is not the same as shaping the news itself to be more interesting and understandable to teens. Given teens' general lack of in terest in "the news" as subject matter, it is not sufficient to sim ply deliver a shortened version of an adult news show with hu man interest add-ons.

Second, there is the very important issue of equipment. Most cable companies, as part of their franchise agreement, will bring the cable signal into every school building. But it is up to the school to get the signal to each classroom and to provide tele vision sets for viewing cable programs. If the Whittle figure of $30,000 per school is accurate, most districts cannot afford such an investment in equipment on their own. Indeed, this is a key argument that school boards give for accepting the Channel One package. The equipment offer is compelling - and for good reason. Getting a signal to every classroom is not a lux ury; it is an essential part of making television a usable resource. The CNN model is adequate if the curriculum goal is to get a news program into a limited number of classes that are com mitted to teaching about current events. The videotape of each night's show can be shuttled to these classes and viewed using the school's portable video carts (a television and VCR installed on a roll-around cart). But such practice is inadequate if the curricular goal is to have all students watch a little news each day.

Two other features limit the utility of "CNN Newsroom" as a daily news show. The program is 15 minutes long, not 10 min utes long. While this sounds like a small difference, it is sig nificant. We know from the experience of Channel One schools around the country that "finding" 12 minutes in the school day is very difficult. A typical strategy is to extract two minutes from every class period. Indeed, both "CNN Newsroom" and

Channel One might well be more appealing if they were only 10 minutes long. Of course, a school could be selective and show only part of the broadcast, but this would require some one to make daily decisions about where to cut the show.

CNN provides a teacher's guide for each broadcast. It is dis tributed by fax, by modem, or by a cable-based on-line infor

mation service. The idea is compelling, for it allows a teacher to prepare for a discussion of each day's news. For a current events teacher who is committed to preparing for a class dis cussion of the news each day, this is an excellent resource that uses a very innovative mode of distribution. But it is not likely

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to be used by teachers in other curricular areas. In some ways, a schoolwide daily news show needs to be handled "on the fly" by teachers who can take advantage of their own knowledge of world events to help students follow day-to-day happenings around the world. The required viewing built into the Channel

One model is somewhat troubling, but the CNN model has its own drawbacks.

Channel One Without Ads?

One of the high-profile news items of the fall of 1994 was the sale of Channel One to K-III Communications Corporation for $300 million. Why was the federal government not among the bidders for the Whittle properties? With federal underwrit ing, Channel One could have been added to the menu of edu cational offerings on the Public Television Service. The au tonomy and integrity of the news operation could have been

maintained (as has been the case with other PBS news pro grams, such as the "MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour"). Most im portant, the commercials that have become the lightning rod for criticism of Channel One could have been eliminated. Ed ucators would then have had only the content to critique, and their discussions of Channel One would have been focused on the relative value of daily news and current events program

ming to the school curriculum. And this is where the debate should be focused.

No one advocates showing commercials in the classroom as a daily instructional practice. But school boards responsible for 12,000 schools throughout the country are willing to accept two minutes of commercials precisely because they have no other way to furnish their schools with the equipment and pro gramming Whittle provides.

Channel One is an important innovation with great educa tional potential. It is unfortunate that the deliberations of edu cators and others about its value to the educational enterprise should be influenced by the current method used to pay for it.

1. Members of the team were Evelyn Brzezinski from Interwest Applied Re

search, Beaverton, Oregon, and Eric Andeman and I from the Institute for So

cial Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

2. Jerome Johnston and Evelyn Brzezinski, Taking the Measure of Channel

One: The First Year (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, University of

Michigan, 1992).

3. Jerome Johnston and Eric M. Anderman, Taking the Measure of Channel

One: The School Factor (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, Universi

ty of Michigan, 1993). 4. Jerome Johnston, Evelyn Brzezinski, and Eric M. Anderman, Taking the

Measure of Channel One: A Three-Year Perspective (Ann Arbor: Institute for

Social Research, University of Michigan, 1994).

5. John Robinson and Mark R. Levy, The Main Source: Learning from Televi

sion News, People and Communication, vol. 17 (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1986). 6. Vincent Price and John Zaller, "Who Gets the News?," Public Opinion Quar

terly, vol. 57, 1993, pp. 133-64.

7. Andrew Kohut, Eight Nation, People & the Press Survey: Mixed Message About Press Freedom on Both Sides of Atlantic and Pacific (Washington, D.C:

Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press, 1994), p. 3.

8. Jerome Johnston et al., Improving Civic Discourse in the Classroom: An Ex

periment (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1994).

9. Bradley S. Greenberg and Jeffrey E. Brand, "Television News and Adver

tising in Schools: The 'Channel One' Controversy," Journal of Communica

tion, vol. 43, 1993, pp. 143-51. K




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