ABSTRACT
This chapter provides perspectives from independent films to demonstrate that good, critical information is available outside of the overwhelming output from the media monopoly. There has been a pendulum swing from the days of the Bill of Rights until today the media (the press) have been bought up by corporations to serve their interests and away from the service of the people. The Channel One broadcasts are nothing more than a maximization of media messages. This chapter addresses some particulars of the media effects on education. While children receive an overwhelming amount of exposure directly from the corporate media, the ideas that children typically acquire from their parents are also influenced by the dominant ideas of the culture, often at an emotional level. The chapter explains three domains of the children's lives, among the most representative of these effects: exposure to the junk food industries, exposure to the self-image industries and exposure to the desensitization of violence.
