In his book "Pedagogy of Freedom" Paulo Freire draws a distinction between knowledge transfer and knowledge construction. Parmar and Krinsky describes how a variety of factors in a person's life contributes to the construction of their knowledge, writing:

"a young child is shaped by the knowledge he or she is exposed to by family members. This in turn shapes the child's identity. When that child grows into adolescence, other forces help construct knowledge and shape identity. These forces are individualized and range from the teen's peer group to the media" (p. 33

The media, according to Parmar and Krinsky play a large role in constructing our realities, and it is therefore crucial to understand how they choose to report the news, and what pasts and collective memories they draw from when they report the news.

In the news media, the relationship between consumer and producer can often seem like a one way street, as the media transfers knowledge of an event to the consumer. However, as Cortes (2005) notes the media knows what the audience is "preconditioned to expect" (p. 66) and their reporting can often "feed into" expectation (p. 68). Thus, the cultural memory media create can be thought of as a co-construction between consumer and producer, as the media report to conform to expectation, and the consumer chooses content based on his or her own expectations.

However, these sorts of expectations often lead to stereotypes of marginalized groups, drawing on cultural memory that may not necessarily be true, and even the reporting of outright falsehoods.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the media often used these audience expectations to shape the narrative about those left behind.

In images like this one, the media reinforced stereotypes about poverty and race. Not only conforming to audience's expectations, but also creating those expectations for the future, as they deemed minor property theft to be newsworthy while many people were trapped without adequate food, water, or medical care.

Even more egregious is this example from the media's coverage in which two otherwise identical photos of peple searching for supplies in the aftermath are labeled differently. The white couple is said to have "found" their food, while the black youth is said to have "looted" his.

Once again, we see the media catering to expectations and crafting a narrative of poverty and race. But it is worth examining how these expectations may be informed by things that happened before many of the people who were consuming these reports were born.

The presentation of these images evokes earlier instances of these narratives around race and looting. In this New York Times story (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/weekinreview/07mcneil.html?pagewanted=all...), the writer engages in what Zeilzer (2008) describes as "historical analogues, direct comparisons between present and past, and investigations of seemingly 'historical' events" (p. 84).

However, even in the visual compositions of the photos of Katrina and the New York Blackouts we can see the similarities between the ways that these events are placed in comparison. Zeilzer says that these sorts of subtle comparisons reflect journalists decisions about "which stories play in which mediums and using which tools for relay" which places them "squarely in the realm of memory work" (p. 83).

It would seem that an obvious point of comparison for the media doing this work of cultural memory construction of hurricanes, would be Hurricane Sandy in 2012, however the aftermath (pictured) looks far different from the aftermath of Katrina in the preceeding slides, depicting not only cooperation rather than theft, but also choosing images of those cooperating who are white.

This recalls again the media's use of expectation in the creation of these narratives. While research shows that crises tends to bring out the best in people, that only became newsworthy when those offering help were white and in middle class neighborhoods, whereas after Katrina the media create "a profile of looters" primarily of young black people "… that overlooked whatever prosocial, altruistic behaviors such groups may have undertaken.” (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/11/looting_af...)

At other times in the media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the media drew on these expectations to report outright falsehoods and further embed stereotypes. At one point. loud noises were heard near a hospital as a rescue helicopter attempted to take off. Folklorist Carl Lindahl writes of the explanation given for sounds heard by medical personel: "Most dramatic, and most often reported—by every network—was the story that snipers were firing upon a rescue helicopter. Cable news channels endlessly re-ran this report, voiced over file footage of a Red Cross helicopter. The story went around the world numberless times before it was disputed and debunked, and even now—years after its refutation—it is broadly accepted as fact" (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_american_folklore/v125/125.496.lind...)

Reports such as these, since debunked, work in concert with the images of lawlessness to create a narrative about poverty and race. Not only are the individuals depicted and discussed undeserving of our sympathy due to lawlessness, they are actively resisting rescue by firing on helicopters.

Just as important as what cultural memories the media did draw on and reinforce was which memories they rejected outright. Lindahl also recounts how other survivors--this time, poor residents of the lower 9th ward--reported strange noises shortly before the levees broke and interpreted those noises as the government intentionally blowing up the levee. This too was based on a cultural memory, though not a media-endorsed one. Lindahl writes:

"During the 1927 Mississippi River flood (which drove nearly one million people from their homes and which was known in the times before Katrina as “America’s greatest peacetime disaster”), the levees downriver from New Orleans were intentionally dynamited by the US government, flooding St. Bernard Parish for the express purpose of sparing the city"

In spite of this view being grounded in a cultural memory, and one arguably more concrete than the assumed gunfire on a rescue helicopter, Lindahl quotes a typical media response to these accusations: "You know the truth, which is the federal government did not blow up the levees so don’t feed the paranoia and the crazies. . . . You’re saying it’s entirely possible when you know perfectly well it’s not possible”

While not all coverage centered on supposed criminal behavior and lawlessness, many of the images of the destruction of Katrina focused on the destruction of property, especially the Lousiana Superdome which housed survivors in the aftermath.

Lacking in all of the coverage, however, were the voices of the victims of Katrina. As Lindahl writes, the focus on the destruction and the lack of victims' voices naturally led to the negative images dominating the coverage

"the least powerful were not even allowed to repeat their legends—there were only a few, mutually isolated media platforms from which the stories of the survivors could be heard at all. Lacking a narrative to account for their own victimization, they were transformed into villains through rumor."

It's easy to see how the coverage of the victims then as criminals has cemented into cultural memory of Katrina now.

These examples of the ways that the media has a large role in shaping audience expectations and influencing cultural memory points to the importance of teaching a critical media literacy. As Parmar and Krinsky note, "Critical media literacy is transformative and liberatory in that it creates consciousness as students are able to distinguish between reality and false perceptions" (p. 43).

By asking students questions about the media they consume, whose voices are trusted, and whose voices are never heard, we can prevent the sort of damaging stereotypes that dominated the coverage of Katrina from becoming part of a larger cultural memory of future events.