The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

The truth is out there Television isn't all bad, says media literacy expert John Pungente - just look carefully and think critically No-one likes to admit to watching much television, especially not in a room full of serious-minded people gathered to hear an expert on media literacy deliver a lecture entitled "Windows on the Landscape: Catholics Taking Television Seriously." So it's not surprising that there were a few self-conscious giggles around the room when John Pungente, S.J. asked people to raise their hands if they watched popular television programs like The X-Files, or Seinfeld, or Picket Fences, or Friends. But according to Pungente, who is currently Director of the Jesuit Communication Project in Toronto, there's nothing wrong with watching these programs. "Television in and of itself is neither good nor bad," he says. "It just exists. What makes it good or bad is the use we make of it." Appropriately enough, Pungente, who was invited to the College to deliver the 5th Annual Ignatian Lecture, an annual lecture endowed by the Upper Canada Province of the Society of Jesus, finds support for his position in the writings of St. Ignatius, founding father of the Jesuits. "We are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save our souls," quotes Pungente. "The other things on the face of the earth are created for us to help us in attaining the end for which we were created. Hence we are to make use of all the things on the earth insofar as they help us to the attainment of our goal and to get rid of them insofar as they prove a hindrance to our goal." People are quick to condemn television, Pungente says. A Vancouver organization called the Media Foundation calls television addiction the number one health issue of the day. Keith Spicer, who is head of the CRTC, has said that "the mass media are significant contributors to the aggressive behaviour and aggression-related attitudes of many children, adolescents, and adults." And books with titles like The Plug-in Drug and Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television abound. But perhaps we have missed something in our general rush to judgment, Pungente suggested to his audience. Like any medium, television is capable of both great harm and great good. Television can serve as a great educator. "The three traditional agents of education the home, the school, and the church -- have been joined by a fourth agent: the mass media," Pungente says. Documentaries such as Out: The problems of lesbian and gay youth and Hearts of Hate: The battle for young minds offer information on issues ranging from the problems facing young gays to the chilling rise of neofascism among young Canadians. Docudramas such as the powerfully written and acted The Boys of St. Vincent are another source of educational material. And you can learn a lot about the media from the media, says Pungente. "Media TV, on City TV, analyzes various aspects of the media quite brilliantly." But television doesn't have to be educational to be of value. "There's nothing wrong with using television as a means of relaxation," Pungente says, noting that shows like Frasier, Home Improvement, and Friends "are lots of fun to watch and don't overwhelm us with sex and violence that we find, quite rightly, so distasteful." Television programs, whether they are educational or entertaining, present values, "sometimes values we don't want our children to have," Pungente notes, but there are also other values -- personal, social, and religious values -- that we approve of as Christians, as ordinary, decent human beings, and that we would like our children to understand." As an example, he cites an episode of Northern Exposure in which the mayor of the small Alaskan town in which the series is set has to struggle with racist feelings when confronted by his grown son, the result of an affair with a young Korean woman during the Korean War. Racism is learned behaviour, he discovers, and can be unlearned. The medium is capable of great good, Pungente argues. Condemning it is not the answer. "It comes as a surprise to people to learn that, in 1938, the church began urging people to look at motion pictures and to pass critical viewing skills on to children. The church asks us to reach out towards the greater good, to try to understand what is good about the media and not sit around saying how bad it is." We seldom look through the window television offers us at "the something else that is out there." We should not necessarily accept what we see through that window, Pungente observes. "What we need to do is offer our children and ourselves the tools of media literacy, the ability to look carefully, think critically." John Pungente will be returning to St. Jerome's this summer to co-teach a course entitled The Religious Experience of the Young. For details on the course, or to obtain a cassette tape of "Windows on the Landscape: Catholics Taking Television Seriously," call 884-8110, ext. 259. University of St. Jerome's College Volume 14 Number I Spring/Summer 1996 Photo: Ron Hewson