We're doing it for the kids on Media7 this week. First up, a discussion sparked by Amanda Johnson's recent post on SciBlogs, looking at studies on the effect of associating licensed media properties with fast food.
Amanda will be joining us, along with the "free range chef", Annabel Langbein. Sarah Daniell and I have put together a set-up video looking at the quite striking disconnect between the marketing -- would you like a burger and fries with your favourite cartoon characters? -- and the modern editorial trend, most strongly seen in the works of Jamie Oliver, towards celebrity chefs evangelising healthy eating.
I have a good deal of admiration for Oliver -- he's taken the all-too-often empty format of the "mission doc" and actually given it purpose. He even got a TED prize, which led to this talk:
Then we'll turn to the media meme of moment -- kids! bullying! cameras! -- and try and make some sense of it with Victoria University Media Studies lecturer Dr Peter Thompson, and Dr John Langley, who's a member of the advisory board established by the Ministry of Social Development to prepare a series of reports on children with "conduct problems".
I think the nub of the issue for our purposes is that flaps like the current one -- which has verged on moral panic -- do draw attention to the problem of violence and bullying, but not necessarily in the most productive way.
The Prime Minister's abrupt discovery of the issue a press conference led swiftly to a response from his Education minister that might in itself be seen as a bullying one. Take your pick of the headlines: Principals meet minister for bullying talks, or Tolley tells schools to toughen up on bullying, or Tolley tells school boards to combat bullying. The NZEI responded with Schools don’t need to be bullied into action.
The problem is that headline-driven barking is probably not the best means to a long-term solution. At the same time, as Chris Carter has been keen to point out, a long-term project has been hobbled by government funding cuts.
And finally -- today is the last day for voting in the Freeview Awards, and if you were so minded, you could vote for Media7. Here.
And if you'd like to join us for tomorrow evening's recording, we'll need you to present yourself at the Victoria Street entrance of TVNZ between 5.15pm and 5.40. As ever, it helps if you can email me to let me know you're coming.