What a pity!
From Cultural Indicators to Political
Correctness:
Communicating
for the Establishment, Erasing the History, and
Discriminating the Alumni:The Story of the Annenberg
School for [of] Communications at the University of
Pennsylvania
In the beginning it was “of communications.” Then it became “for communication.” This voyage from "of" to "for" is a very teaching and touching story of the once-the-best of all communications schools in the world.
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“My success? Being born the son of Moses Annenberg.”
On the Annenberg School’s web page, this foundation is mentioned in these sentences:
“In
1958, publisher, diplomat, and philanthropist Walter Annenberg founded the
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.”
With
a slight distortion concealed here: It was “of communications” when it was
founded from 1958 to 1990, not “for communication”! This is erasing the history,
subtly…
(I) Here starts the
distortion of the history of the School on its official web page. This change
of letters is an alteration of the function especially carried out by George
Gerbner's period of the School and the mission and the meaning it was given by
the founder:
“Every human advancement or reversal can be understood through communication. The right to free communication carries with it the responsibility to respect the dignity of others – and this must be recognized as irreversible.
Educating students to effectively communicate this message and to be of service
to all people is the enduring mission of this School.” Ambassador Walter H.
Annenberg
Although it
is just one small letter “r,” it became a very huge shift from the original
excellence of the school to today’s crumbling inn in communication. Today it
may be called the “Annenberg School in Communication,” which hosts “democratic”
political correctness in disguise.
The history
of the School is not well presented on the web pages, if not deliberately
distorted… Here is another erasing of history, very harshly:
“Under Gerbner’s oversight, the faculty grew
to between 10 and 12 members. Early faculty hires included Sol Worth, Charles
Wright, Percy Tannenbaum, and Larry Gross—all prominent scholars in the
field.
“Other faculty, many of them still a part of
the school today, hired during this period include Robert C. Hornik, Klaus
Krippendorff, Carolyn Marvin, Oscar Gandy, Paul Messaris and Joseph Turrow.”
Who are missing in these lists are not just excusable but a fatal attempt to erase
the history of the School:
Ray L. Birdwhistell held the position of
professor at the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1969
until he retired in 1988, he was an American anthropologist who
founded kinesics as a field
of inquiry and research in communications and who was my teacher. Birdwhistell
coined the term kinesics, meaning “facial expression,
gestures, posture and gait, and visible arm and body movements.” He
estimated that “no more than 30 to 35 percent of the social meaning of a
conversation or an interaction is carried by the words.” Let’s warn: The Annenberg
School might have been missing 70 percent of the communications.
The second missing
person is Robert Lewis Shayon who between 1965 and 2000 was one of the leading faculty
members of the ASC and was one of the main figures of the American mainstream media, who also was
my teacher. In 1950, Shayon fell victim to the
McCarthy Era blacklists when his name was sullied by an anti-Communist
propaganda attack on the broadcast industry. He has a very similar background
to George Gerbner, who also was my teacher.
These two
examples (the name of the School and two missing persons) are only distortions
on the surface. Many could be found, because the Annenberg School for/of/in
Communications of the University of Pennsylvania is not in good hands.
Annenberg started its life with Master’s Program. This program became the strongest pillar of the School until 1990. After George Gerbner, it slowly withered away, not only as the content of education—this could be considered as an educational decision—but also from the Alumni lists as well, on the web pages and elsewhere. This is a big discrimination. Although the School’s research and education endeavor consists of the “rhetoric” (Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s favorite research area) of “non-discrimination,” the practice of the School to its most valuable asset, Master’s Degree Alumni, is clearly out casting the majority of studentship. On the web pages, there is no list of Master in Communication program Alumni, at the time this observation is written. This might have far-reaching outcomes and even might end up being discrimination against the law.
Ironically, there is news on the web page about a new Master’s program. What did happen to the old one? “Annenberg’s commitment
to professional education in communication dates back to its founding in 1954,
when it launched a Masters in Communication as its inaugural academic program.
That program, which was last offered in 2000, produced generations of graduates
who advanced to successful careers in business, media, nonprofit leadership,
and academia. Now, 25 years later, Annenberg is reimagining this degree,
defined by rapid technological change, global interconnectivity, and evolving
professional demands.”Please find above
another sloppiness of the School when it comes to distorting its history. What are
we communicating?
(III) This is what is written on the web pages of the school about
its foundation years:“The emphasis then was on the media of the day—radio,
television, film, and print publishing—with the hopes that graduates would go
on to become creators, critics, teachers, executives, and policymakers. In its
founding incarnation, the School taught both hands-on skills and the broader
theories from liberal arts disciplines like psychology and sociology that
inform mass communication.” Until
2018, it achieved a prestigious standing among the communications schools around
the world. But leaving the footprints of George Gerbner behind, day by day,
after 1989, the School lost its aura. The research became “administrative”; the
teaching became redundant and superficial with mediocre theoretical excellence;
and mostly the “knowledge heritage of the school” had been forgotten to be
transmitted to the new generation of scholars and practitioners. Now the
“Gerbner Archives” is very hard to find on the School’s web pages. Critical
thinking, if it remains, is in the service of only one-sided political
correctness: the Establishment.
During
1989-2025, almost no one outside of the United States heard anything about the
School’s theoretical and practical work in order to widely sound the Founder’s
aspirations:Every
human advancement or reversal can be understood through communication. The
right to free communication carries with it the responsibility to respect the
dignity of others—and this must be recognized as irreversible.
I will only
take one example of research announced on the web pages as evidence of what I
claim. Its announcement is above. This is what I call “democratic” political
correctness in disguise. I have two reasons to assert this claim:(1) The
content of Spiral of Cynicism,
written by Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Oxford U.P., 1997), shows just the opposite of what is found in the mentioned research. (2) The Authoritarian Personality of Adorno et al. (1950) is still not thoroughly
reexamined by the American scholars in today’s cultural environment yet.
Of course I am not saying in any sense that this research announcement should not be covered by the School’s Newsletter or that this type of research solely reflects the school’s situation wholly, but then why has the School’s Newsletter not covered my recent book, Digitalism vs. Capitalism, Amazon-KDP, July 2024, as alumni news, although I had submitted the news request several times?That is the question!
Isn’t it
another discrimination, erasing the history, and “democratic” political
correctness in disguise?
I shouldn’t
be humble: to be honest, according to my research, the research announcement
above, which I took as an example, more or less reflects the school's approach
to communications research after Larry Gross departed to the second ASC in 2003.
CONCLUDING NOTE: I wrote this
piece to show how to conceal the crumbling academic life of all sorts, in all
countries, with a very well-designed shop window. To be continued.
Some archival materials to show how the
Annenberg School was with its alumni in the past:
Veysel Batmaz had carried out a Cultural Indicators Research in Turkey supervised by George Gerbner.
Veysel Batmaz submitted to the librarian of the ASC, Sharon Black, the Turkish translation of George Gerbner’s writings, which were edited by Michael Morgan: Against the Mainstream—Medyaya Karşı in 2014
To be
continued:
The Annenberg
School’s Voyage—2: What is missing today?:The Cultural Environment Movement (CEM) of George Gerbner
