Neo-liberal News for Kids: Citizenship Lessons from Channel One

Abstract

This article asks “What lessons does commercially produced news teach young people about the meaning of democracy and of citizenship?” Three competing models of democracy are introduced: Neo-liberalism; Communitarianism; and Participatory. With these three models as reference points, one week of Primedia's Channel One video news program—the week of the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, Washington—is analyzed. While the concept of “democracy” is never directly taken up in this programming, it is argued that the stories, advertisements, and formal structure construct a compelling vision of neo-liberalism as the normative standard for democracy in the United States.