Media literacy to dispel myths and improve public policy

Communications professor Bill Yousman discusses media literacy and dispelling myths about crime and justice. He is interviewed by Spencer Graves. Yousman is a professor of communications in the School of Communication, Media & the Arts in Sacred Heart University in Bridgeport, Connecticut . Two of his research reports have appeared in Project Censored 's annuals for 2017 and 2025: "Eleven theses on disinformation (with apologies to Karl Marx)" (2025) "Who's afraid of critical media literacy?" (2017). In a section of a book scheduled to appear later this year, he quotes a 2021 tweet from conservative activist Christopher Rufo that, “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. ... The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory.' We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans." Others of his publications relevant to the current discussion include the following: '"[IN]JUSTICE ROLLS DOWN LIKE WATER. . .": Challenging White Supremacy in Media Constructions of Crime and Punishment'. "Challenging the media-incarceration complex through media education". Prime Time Prisons on U.S. TV: Representation of Incarceration (2009). The Spike Lee Enigma: Challenge and Incorporation in Media Culture (2013). And he is a co-editor of Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader , a widely used collection of research reports on issues of power, identity, and ideology in popular culture. More on this is available in the Wikiversity article on, " Media literacy to dispel myths and improve public policy ". Bibliography Stephen J. Hartnett, Eleanor Novek, and Jennifer K. Wood, eds. (1 June 2013). Working for justice: a handbook of prison education and activism (University of Illinois Press). Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth, eds. (2016), Mickey Huff; Andy Lee Roth (eds.), Censored 2017 . Mickey Huff, Shealeigh Voitl, and Andy Lee Roth, eds. (3 December 2024). Project Censored's State of the Free Press 2025 (Project Censored). Rebecca Ann Lind, ed. (2026 forthcoming), Race/Gender/Class/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers , ( Routledge) . Bill Yousman (2026 forthcoming), "8", in Lind (ed.), "We Will Eventually Turn It Toxic": Critical Race Theory, Disinformation, and the Weaponization of an Idea. Bill Yousman (3 December 2024), "6" in HUff et al. (eds.) , Eleven theses on disinformation (with apologies to Karl Marx). Bill Yousman, "26", in Yousman; et al. (eds.), "[IN]JUSTICE ROLLS DOWN LIKE WATER. . .": Challenging White Supremacy in MediaConstructions of Crime and Punishment. Bill Yousman (2016), "10", in Huff and Roth (ed.), Who's afraid of critical media literacy? , pp. 369–416. Bill Yousman (2013a), "7", in Harnett; et al. (eds.), Challenging the Media-Incarceration Complex through media education (published 2013). Bill Yousman (2013b). The Spike Lee Enigma: Challenge and Incorporation in Media Culture (in en). Peter Lang (published 1 July 2013). Bill Yousman (2 September 2009). Prime Time Prisons on U.S. TV: Representation of Incarceration (Peter Lang). Bill Yousman, Lori Bindig, Gail Dines, and Jean McMahon Humez, eds. (24 July 2020). Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader, 6th ed. (SAGE Publishing). Copyright 2026 Bill Yousman and Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 international license.

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Media literacy to dispel myths and improve public policy is an episode from Radio Active Magazine by KKFI 90.1 FM / Radio Active Magazine.

This episode is 28:53 long.

This episode was published on Mar 10, 2026.

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